h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can bacteriophages be manipulated so that they will not mix genetic materials; if they come in contact with other viruses in the body, while trying to combat diseases??

Not with current techniques (as far as I know)
BCNU - Crescent

what is a bacteriophage ?

A bacteria killing virus.....
BCNU - Crescent

can you give a couple of examples (that affect the human body) ?

None effect the human body, they effect bacteria, but some will effect bacteria in the human body - the lambdaphage targets E.coli, so you could speculate that it would be possible to engineer a phage that will only attack E.coli H157:O7. Most phages are just given number/letter combinations for names, a quick search on google would probably help more than I can Hope this helps, until later....
BCNU - Crescent

thanks. this is interesting, i haven't heard of this before.

are the lambdaphages already in the human body, or do they come in if e coli is there ?

and do you know what the human immune response is to bacteriophages ?

I would have thought that there would be at least some in the human body (considering the amount of E.coli that are in us) and possibly a large resevoir in our symbiotic flora and fauna. If the human body encountered a phage I would imagine that it would treat it like any other interloper, surround it by immunoglobins and trash it. However most of the immune system works places where bacteria and virii should not be, in the healthy body I imagine it wouldn't encounter many. More speculation from the pen of Crescent, thank you for reading and until later.....
BCNU - Crescent

Are these the things you see under electron-scanning microscopes that have corkscrews, spikes and other medieaval torture implements stuck to the outside?

Liam.

I would imagine so, lambda phage looks like a moon lander (with a big spike to inject itself into its host - or so I recall ) Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

I think all the e coli that's in the human body is in the gut so is isolated from our system. so i don't think there are any phages in us.

and i don't believe that viruses can interact with each other.

I would agree that E.coli is normally a whole mucus membrane from effecting us directly, however, they are also inside us (in the intestine) and so an argument could be made that we do have phages inside us.

Virii can interact with each other, at least in the host cell. When they are just naked DNA or RNA then two could be joined together in the cell. Reterovirii meld themselves into the host genome, so it is possible that after infection, a second reterovirus infects and just happens to choose an overlapping place to insert itself, it is also possible that the second virus may then pick up a gene (or only half a gene) of the first virus. I do not know how common it is, but it is definately possible. Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Technically speaking the entire digestive cavity is outside of our body.

And yeah, good point. Guess it is possible but wouldn't have thought that it's all that likely. But when you're getting millions and millions of copies done it's bound to happen at some point.

Technically, yes. Actually, no I wasn't sure of the technical level of the questioner, so erred on the side of lay

I am not sure about the phages being able to interact, but it does seem viable. The reterovirii do, however, I remember studying about that (they can pick up host genes and everything, frightening) Until later.....
BCNU - Crescent

Considering how virions work - ie. inserting their DNA into the Bacterial genome in order to get copied into more virions then i would say the answer to the original question is a big fat NO, otherwise they would no longer be viruses.

Bacteriophages (along with other viruses) outnumber even bacteria - the most abundant life form so I would find it hard to imagine we are not bombarded with them continuously.

There is a lovely h2g2 article all about them A471575