Understanding The Enemy of Our Enemy: Bacteriophage

Introduction We, the Homo sapiens live in a microbial driven world which is believed to be tempered by the existence of microorganisms to create atmospheric conditions allowing other eukaryotic life forms to flourish on this planet from an early hostile environment to a present day Earth. A significant portion of the planet's life is made up of microorganisms, which are also essential to the preservation of the Earth's ecology. Enzymes encoded by bacteria and archaea play a crucial part in the carbon and nitrogen cycles, catalyzing all major processes involved in global biogeochemical cycling and contributing to the production of over half of Earth's oxygen (Clokie et al., 2011). However some micro-organisms can be pathogenic and can cause diseases in plants, animals and humans. For the rescue from such enemies, scientists and researchers have developed various antimicrobials to curtail their growth and thus inhibiting the progress of certain diseases. Antibiotics are the ‘magic bullets’ extensively and indiscriminately used more or less in almost every medical or veterinary specialty as well as agriculture and livestock production over a century and are arguably most important and widely used intervention in this Darwinian race. Throughout this period, the bacteria have developed strategies to combat against such antibiotic therapy for becoming not only resistant to antibiotics but multidrug resistant (MDR) which can be easily transferred to their descendants, generations after generations resulting in accouchement of “Superbugs” undergirding the proverb “bad bugs can bite back”. Antibiotics are becoming less effective as a result, making an increasing variety of infections more difficult to cure. Antibiotics that are freely available for purchase for human or animal use without a prescription and without following established treatment guidelines hasten the formation and spread of resistance. According to a review report on Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR), death attributable to AMR is 10 million per year-by-year 2050. A paradigm shift in the treatment of infectious diseases with alternative therapies is urgently needed, as the nebulous concept of antibiotic prudence is one of the mitigating strategies to curb the threat of antibiotic overuse. However, the emergence of antibiotic failure due to bacterial resistance has raised serious concerns. Among the various researches, the notion of bacteriophage therapy is getting a second look as a potential weapon against MDR bacteria to be used as an alternative or as supplement to antibiotic treatments (Nikolich and Andrey, 2020).