(Source: Stanford School of Medicine) Like all viruses, a phage can reproduce itself only by climbing into a cell - in this case, a bacterial cell - and commandeering its replicative machinery. Usually that's lethal to the invaded cell, because the viruses' offspring break out of the cell by puncturing its outer membrane, destroying the cell. Leaving host cells alive But Inoviruses don't do that. Instead, these long, thin viruses are extruded from the bacterial cell without causing damage. Indeed, as the study shows, in the presence of organic substances called polymers, they shelter the bacteria they've infected by forming goopy lattices - biofilms - able to repel or sequester...
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