[conspire] Café Scientifique, Feb 16: Bacteriophages

[Nick Moffitt]

On 15Feb2023 10:31am (-0800), Deirdre Saoirse Moen wrote:
> I love bacteriophages, viruses that destroy bacteria. They look like little
> lunar landers. They wind their body up like a spring so they can inject their
> genome into a bacterium. (Viruses have no metabolism and therefore no
> movement outside a cell, so this is an interesting adaptation.)

My second go 'round at university, I satisfied a science requirement with a microbiology course.  There was an extra credit question at the end of the final exam, and it asked something like "What is the most surprising think you've learned in this class?"

I put down that I was genuinely surprised to learn that bacteriophages were viruses.  Given the name (Greek for "bacteria-eater"), I had assumed all my life that they were some sort of eukaryotic predator!