Team builds viruses to combat harmful 'biofilms'

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This diagram shows how an engineered virusT7 destroys a biofilm composed of E. coli bacteria. Graphic courtesy Timothy Lu and James Collins
This diagram shows how an engineered virus,T7, destroys a biofilm composed of E. coli bacteria. Graphic courtesy / Timothy Lu and James Collins

In one of the first potential applications of synthetic biology, an emerging field that aims to design and build useful biomolecular systems, researchers from MIT and Boston University are engineering viruses to attack and destroy the surface "biofilms" that harbor harmful bacteria in the body and on industrial and medical devices.


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