The common cold, the Flu and chickenpox are all common diseases caused by the most abundant group of disease-causing microbes on earth. These nasty bugs are really not alive in the strict sense of the word because they do not reproduce on their own. Nor can they assemble the necessary building blocks to even make their own energy. They can only sit and wait for contact with an unsuspecting host cell. Given the right opportunity these lazy microbes will infect a cell. After infection these ingenious fellows take over the cell's machinery using it to make protein and genetic material. Before you know it these new cellular dictators have taken over and are reproducing more of themselves. To add insult to injury many of the members of this parasitic group will destroy their host as they leave in hopes of infecting more healthy and unsuspecting cells.
No living thing is free of these microbial invaders. Man, animals, plants, fungi, and even bacteria all routinely fall prey to these tiny little parasites. If you haven't guessed by now this group of microbes I have been describing are called viruses.
Viruses like good athletes know their opponent (host cell) very well. They know just what is required to infect, takeover, multiply, and get out of the host cell. They know the weak spots of the cells they infect to their advantage. It is this viral advantage that some researchers at The Rockefeller University in New York City have been utilizing to help in the war against anthrax. Although Bacillus anthracis, the cause of anthrax, can be a deadly human pathogen some researchers have found one of its weak spots. They found a weak spot of this bacterium using an old foe of the anthrax bacterium called a bacteriophage (bacteria-eating virus). As these bacteriophages leave the anthrax bacterium they cause it to produce a protein which literally digests away the bacterial cell wall. Without the cell wall the bacterium bursts releasing the newly produced viruses.
Vincent A. Fischetti, Ph.D and co-authors Raymond Schuch, Ph.D., and Daniel Nelson, Ph.D. (August 22 issue of Nature) were able to purify this bacteriophage protein. It is a very stable protein and when applied to a test tube full of Bacillus anthracis they could watch the bacteria literally disintegrate (see it yourself watch the movie).
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