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A new research led by Dr Kimberley Seed from the Tufts University School of Medicine provides the first evidence that bacteriophages – viruses that infect and replicate within bacteria – can acquire a wholly functional and adaptive immune system.

The study, published today in the journal Nature, finds that a viral predator of the cholera bacteria can steal the functional immune system of bacteria and use it against its bacterial host.

Developing phage therapy is particularly important because some bacteria, called superbugs, are resistant to most or all current antibiotics.

“I think I’ve just thought up something important,”