We Might Absorb Billions of Viruses Every Day
And that’s a good thing.
The viruses, Jeremy Barr realized, were in the wrong place.
Barr and his colleagues at San Diego State University had grown a layer of gut cells in a dish, much like those that line the surface of our own twisting intestines. The cells formed such tight connections with each other that bacteria couldn’t sneak past them. Even a dye couldn’t get through. The layer was meant to be impermeable, until the team infused the water on one side of it with viruses called phages.
After a few hours, a few of these phages on the other side. The cells had absorbed them at one end,
