Overview
- University of Exeter researchers report in Cell that some bacteriophages detect peptides from other species and then choose dormancy.
- These short peptides, called arbitrium signals, build up when hosts run low and normally tell a virus to stop killing and wait.
- In lab tests, foreign signals sometimes pushed a responder to lie low at the wrong time, which can restrain faster-spreading superinfectors.
- The team also found cases where one species heard another without being heard in return, showing that one-way control is possible.
- Experiments used phages of Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus thuringiensis, and the authors say the insights could guide phage therapy but need testing in human-pathogen systems.