Oh, I get it: we’re harvesting specific cells from the viruses, not using the viruses as a whole.
Thanks!
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No, we are using the whole virus. Viruses stand at a weird place between life and not-life, depending on who you read. (I come down firmly on the “life” side, but that’s another story) Viruses are unimaginably diverse, even some that prey on other viruses. They are also incredibly specific, usually being dependent on a single species as host. So we find the viruses that specifically target the bacteria we are after (in this case, Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and introduce it into a field of “prey,” and let nature take it’s course.
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I haven’t read the article yet, but doctors in the former Soviet Union made a lot of use of phages when they didn’t have access to antibiotics.
OTOH, researchers are looking at bacteria that are resistant to viruses to try to figure out how they do it.
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Like I said, billions of years of life-and-death struggle. They are really good at it. We are mere pikers. We need to learn how they do it.
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I mean, we have actually been fighting them for billions of years too, and in truth are pretty good at it. It’s only a handful of things that can cope with our immune systems at full capacity. We just (hopefully) care a lot more about not taking losses.
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Ah, would that it were so. You are, of course, correct. But the toll taken by historical plagues (and even not so historical, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) says the battle goes on hot and heavy. I am honestly intrigued by the viroids that seem to prey on other viruses, and the theory of some being remnants of an RNA world that predated our DNA-dominated one, while others are “degenerate” cellular organisms that took parasitism to it’s logical conclusion. Mimivirus and other giant viruses may point in this direction, or something else altogether. A topic for another thread, I guess!
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A new form of reproduction discovered.
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So an Ant can become an Uncle?
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A new study suggests that at least one part of the system goes back to nearly the origin of animals. Researchers have identified a hormone that jellyfish use to determine when they’re full and stop eating. And they found that it’s capable of eliciting the same response in fruit flies, suggesting the system may have been operating in the ancestor of these two very distantly related animals. That ancestor would have lived prior to the Cambrian.
Oh, oh, oh! Now do fungi! Identifying exactly what constitutes “feeding behavior” might be the tough part, of course. Slime molds might be fun as well.
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I guess you think the origin of viruses is off-topic here because science isn’t winning yet? 
https://hal-pasteur.archives-ouvertes.fr/pasteur-03953101/document has some recent thoughts that might still be interesting though.
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Should have said “subthread.” Not really related to phage therapy, just another area I find fascinating. I am such a nerd!
(Printed for light reading later!)
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anal stylus
New band name!
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Not “Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter”?
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FTFY…
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My daughter worked for a startup that was focused on finding phages that would attack mouth plaque. She tells the story of going to a local butcher to get a whole cow’s stomach- a good place to find these phages. Cow guts everywhere, she put the huge stomach in the trunk of her car, paid the woman cash. This woman was eating a sandwich, sitting in the middle of all this. She and handed back the change with the same hand she was eating her sandwich.
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Some people are more easily grossed out or concerned about germs than others, I guess! 
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More samples! Yay! And these were free.
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