Name of Café: Science Café of Olympia
Meeting time/date: Tuesday, February 9, 7:00pm
Meeting location:
Batdorf & Bronson Coffee House
516 Capitol Way S, Olympia WA
Description of meeting:
Bacteriophages: Natural, Self-Replicating, Self-Limiting Antibiotics
Bacteriophages – a special kind of viruses that can only multiply in bacteria – are the most abundant life form on earth. They are found in the oceans, the soil, the food we eat and the water we drink, and help maintain the microbial balance in every part of our planet. They were discovered by Felix d'Herelle in 1917 in the feces of French soldiers recovering from dysentery and soon were being used with enthusiasm to treat intractable infections in both humans and animals. However, phage therapy was largely abandoned in the West in the 1940s due to the advent of chemical antibiotics and the apparent complexity and unreliability of phage-based treatments when compared to antibiotics. As our understanding of both phages and pathogenic bacteria has increased and we are more and more frequently loosing the battle against antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA, interest is again escalating in the possibilities of phage therapy.
Dr. Kutter has worked with phages since 1963, when she began to study their molecular biology and the transition from host to viral metabolism after infection by bacteriophage. In 1990, her work heading the assembly of the genome of T4 led to four months in the Soviet Union (National Academy of Sciences exchange program) and introduced her to the extensive use of phage therapy as a standard part of medical care for wounds, burns, diabetic ulcers and gastrointestinal infections in the Republic of Georgia. This has led to extensive collaborations and the start of a nonprofit PhageBiotics Foundation. The recent 18th biennial Evergreen International Phage Biology meeting drew 150 scientists from 30 countries, helping further stimulate broad interest in phage therapy as well as molecular biology, ecology, genomics and a range of phage applications.
Join us as Dr. Kutter, Prof. at the Evergreen State College, takes us on an exploration of the properties of phages, their surgical use in the Republic of Georgia and in Poland, and the work being carried on at Evergreen. The latter includes studies aimed toward using phages to reduce livestock carriage of E. coli O157, which has caused problems from hamburgers to spinach to water.
Please note our new meeting location – the Batdorf & Bronson coffee House
Donald Lyman, Professor Emeritus, Department of Bioengineering, University of Utah.
Café organized by:The Puget Sound Section of the American Chemical Society with help from the public television series NOVA scienceNOW and sciencecafes.org.
Café contact: dlypr@comcast.net
Date of next meeting: Tuesday, March 9, 7:00pm. Join us for a discussion about the diversity and complexity of rainforest canopies with Dr. Nalini Nadkarni.
About the café:
Presentations will focus on issues that impact our lives locally, nationally and internationally.