] To gather new strains, Sulakvelidze need only drop a ] bucket into Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The waters of the ] Chesapeake Bay, of which the harbor is an inlet, have ] enough exchange with the Atlantic that he can find a ] phage for almost any species of bacteria, he says. If one ] doesn't work, he simply refills his bucket and looks for ] another that does. ] ] "This upgradability is one of the unique qualities of ] phages," Sulakvelidze adds. "Developing a new antibiotic ] takes 10 years and God knows how many millions of ] dollars." ] ] As he puts it, "Mother Nature runs the best genetic ] engineering lab out there. No institution or company can ] match it." I'd like to know just how effective existing phage remedies are. I really should have brought a bunch of this stuff back with me from Moscow. Wired 11.10: How Ravenous Soviet Viruses Will Save the World |