Fig. 1: Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image of bacteriophages (phages) produced to treat a patient with a multi-resistant Enterobacter cloacae urinary tract infection.
From: Bacteriophages: what role may they play in life after spinal cord injury?
The phages are composed of a capsid (containing the genome) connected to a contractile tail with protruding tail fibers which mediate interaction with bacterial surface receptors. Phages are highly host specific, meaning a given phage is capable of infecting only a narrow host range of bacteria (typically down to the species level). TEM image was kindly provided by Matthew Dunne, Ph.D., and Jiemin Du, M.Sc., from the Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
