2LT Local News

SYDNEY, May 1 (Xinhua) — A virus long dismissed as a scientific oddity has been found hiding in plain sight, and it may help fight dangerous bacteria, a Monash University study said on Thursday.

Researchers from the Australian university have discovered that a little-known virus, called a telomere phage, is surprisingly common in Klebsiella, a type of bacteria that can cause pneumonia and serious drug-resistant infections.

“For more than 20 years of intensive bacterial genomics, telomere phages had remained hidden in plain sight. We have missed an entire aspect of biology,” said the study’s senior author Trevor Lithgow, head of Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute Bacterial Cell Biology Lab.

These viruses aren’t just passive passengers as they may actually help good bacteria wipe out neighboring bad ones. The team discovered that bacteria carrying telomere phages produce toxins that kill off rival bacteria, said the study published in Science Advances.

“We now want to understand how the host secretes the toxin and also understand how the toxin wheedles its way into the unsuspecting bacterial neighbors,” said the study’s first author Sally Byers from the Lithgow Laboratory.

The team believes these helpful viruses could exist in many other bacteria, too.