Meet The Microbiologist - The Scientists Behind The Microbiology

Bacteriophage are viruses that infect specific bacteria. Jeremy Barr discusses his discovery that phage interact with (but don’t infect) mammalian epithelial cells. He explains how these different organisms: bacteria, bacteriophage, and the mammalian host, may exist in three-way symbioses. Subscribe (free) on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Android, RSS, or by email. Also available on the ASM Podcast Network app. Julie’s Biggest Takeaways Jeremy’s work as a postdoc focused on developing a protocol to clean phages for use in tissue culture. He and his advisor, Forest Rohwer, were asked to use this protocol to clean phages for a patient extremely sick with a multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii isolate. Within 24 hours, they used an experimental lab method to clean and purify phages that were used in an experimental procedure to treat a very sick person; phage therapy ultimately saved his life. Jeremy discovered that phages can pass through human epithelial cells by using a transwell system. Phage i