As a small virus that infects bacterial cells, bacteriophages were first discovered in 1915. Today, a hundred years later, the scientific contributions of these phages to basic biology, biotechnology, and human health are still effective and undiminished. Their centennial birthday is It is worth celebrating.
In 1915, bacteriologist Frederick Twort published the first paper describing bacteriophage-like viruses, which can infect bacteria, multiply themselves in bacteria and kill bacterial cells. Since then, the research on these viruses has brought huge changes to biology, and people have named these viruses bacteriophages (phages). Bacteriophages provided experimental systems and tools for the molecular biology revolution in the 20th century. Their rapid development has enabled the basic principles of ecology and evolution to be tested. Now, we know that bacteriophages are the most successful biological entities in the world. They are more abundant and genetically diverse than any other life form. Although their importance is obvious, the study of these fascinating entities is still a small and comprehensive scientific act. Here, we briefly review the history of phage research, hoping to inspire and encourage a new generation of phage scientists.

In the early 20th century, most phage scientists were interested in using viruses as antibacterial organisms. This is an era of uncontrolled scientific experiments. People are injected with bacteriophages and viruses are dumped into wells in the hope of killing pathogenic bacteria, such as those that cause cholera. It was the discovery of antibiotics by Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928 that caused such a research route to be reduced dramatically. But today, because antibiotic resistance has become a fact that people have to pay attention to, the concept of "phage therapy" has received people's attention again.

Since then, the development of phage science has entered the realm of quantification, a research network composed of biologists, biochemists, and physicists and named "phage group", using these viruses as models to carry out the frontiers of how life works the study. In 1952, Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase conducted a famous experiment in which radiolabeled phages were removed from bacterial cells using a high-speed centrifuge. To help scientists realize that DNA is genetic material, this experiment later won the Nobel Prize. Through experiments, many phage-encoded DNA manipulation enzymes, such as DNA and RNA polymerases, ligases, endonucleases and exonucleases, have been discovered through experiments, which have continuously given birth to new understandings of molecular biology and the development of the biotechnology industry. , Phage proteins are used every day around the world. Restriction enzymes protect bacteria from phage infection, providing molecular biologists with another indispensable tool. This trend continues to this day. As people have seen, it was the study of how bacteria defend against phages that led scientists to discover the CRISPR-Cas system, and then the genome editing revolution came.