Never-before-seen viruses that can kill bacteria stream from women’s bladders

Enlarge / Viral gold. (credit: Getty | UniversalImagesGroup )

Plumbing the depths of women’s bladders may shower researchers with viral gold.

In a wee survey, Loyola University Chicago researchers found the sac-like organ brimming with never-before-seen viruses that can kill and manipulate bacteria. Their findings, published this week in the Journal of Bacteriology, offer a first-pass catalogue of the rich diversity of bacteria-infecting viruses—aka “phages” or “bacteriophages”—in the bladder microbiome. The researchers suggest that further studies into the streaming viral content could one day lead to phage-based methods to void bacterial infections and identify disorders.

“The thought that there’s not bacteria in urine is false,” Catherine Putonti told Ars straight away. Putonti, a bioinformatics researcher and microbiologist at Loyola, is the leading author of the study. “The big picture is that there are a lot of viruses that are part of these bacterial communities as well.”