In one of the first potential applications of synthetic biology, an emerging field that aims to design and build useful biomolecular systems, researchers from MIT and Boston University are engineering viruses to attack and destroy the surface biofilms that harbour harmful bacteria in the body and on industrial and medical devices.
They have already successfully demonstrated one such virus, and thanks to a plug and play library of parts believe that many more could be custom-designed to target different species or strains of bacteria.
