Are Phages Overlooked Mediators of Health and Disease?

When microbiologist Breck Duerkop started his postdoc in 2009, he figured he’d be focusing on bacteria. After all, he’d joined the lab of microbiome researcher Lora Hooper at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas to study host-pathogen interactions in the mammalian gut and was particularly interested in what causes some strains of normally harmless commensal bacteria, such as Enterococcus faecalis, to become dangerous, gut-dominating pathogens.