Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most abundant lifeform on Earth: the viruses that 'eat' bacteria. Early in the 20th century, scientists noticed that something in their Petri dishes was making bacteria disappear and they called these bacteriophages, things that eat bacteria. From studying these phages, it soon became clear that they offered countless real or potential benefits for understanding our world, from the tracking of diseases to helping unlock the secrets of DNA to treatments for long term bacterial infections. With further research, they could be an answer to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.
With
Martha Clokie Director for the Centre for Phage Research and Professor of Microbiology at the University of Leicester
James Ebdon Professor of Environmental Microbiology at the University of Brighton
And
Claas Kirchhelle Historian and Chargé de Recherche at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research’s CERMES3 Unit in Paris.
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
James Ebdon, ‘Tackling sources of contamination in water: The age of phage’ (Microbiologist, Society for Applied Microbiology, Vol 20.1, 2022)
Thomas Häusler, Viruses vs. Superbugs: A Solution to the Antibiotics Crisis? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
Tom Ireland, The Good Virus: The Untold Story of Phages: The Mysterious Microbes that Rule Our World, Shape Our Health and Can Save Our Future (Hodder Press, 2024)
Claas Kirchhelle and Charlotte Kirchhelle, ‘Northern Normal–Laboratory Networks, Microbial Culture Collections, and Taxonomies of Power (1939-2000)’ (SocArXiv Papers, 2024)
Dmitriy Myelnikov, ‘An alternative cure: the adoption and survival of bacteriophage therapy in the USSR, 1922–1955’ (Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 73, no. 4, 2018)
Forest Rohwer, Merry Youle, Heather Maughan and Nao Hisakawa, Life in our Phage World: A Centennial Field Guide to Earth’s most Diverse Inhabitants (Wholon, 2014)
Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson (2019) The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir (Hachette Books, 2020)
William C. Summers, Félix d`Herelle and the Origins of Molecular Biology (Yale University Press, 1999)
William C. Summers, The American Phage Group: Founders of Molecular Biology (University Press, 2023)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, |
| 0:07.4 | and this is one of more than a thousand episodes |
| 0:10.0 | you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this |
| 0:14.6 | edition you find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoy the program. |
| 0:18.6 | Hello early in the 20th century scientists noticed that something in their labs was making bacteria disappear. |
| 0:26.6 | They call these bacteriophages, things that eat bacteria, and they turn out to be viruses with countless real or potential benefits |
| 0:35.0 | for understanding our world and treating disease. A century later we know |
| 0:39.7 | their most abundant life form on the planet and with further research |
| 0:43.8 | they could be an answer to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. |
| 0:47.8 | We'd need to discuss bacteriophages or phages for short, Martha Cloke, Director for the Center of Page Research and Professor |
| 0:56.0 | of Microbiology at the University of Leicester, James Ebden, Professor of Environmental |
| 1:01.2 | Microbiology at the University of Brighton, and Class Kirkheller, |
| 1:05.2 | historian and Chage de Research at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research's |
| 1:11.3 | Sirmets Tw our unit in Paris. |
| 1:13.7 | Starting with you, Klaus, who first noticed this phenomenon and what did they make of it? |
| 1:20.0 | Well because phages are so ubiquitous in the environment, |
| 1:22.7 | microbiologists probably always observed them |
| 1:25.1 | as soon as they started culturing bacteria, |
| 1:26.9 | a culture that suddenly disappears, |
| 1:29.1 | bacteria that won't grow. |
| 1:30.8 | But it's in the 1890s with the rise of pure culture techniques that we start getting quite a few reports about bacteriologists noticing some kind of weird principle, some kind of licing principle where cultures get destroyed and one of the first reports that |
... |
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