Going viral: Undergrads immersed in the wide, weird world of phages

Oct 22, 2024

Armed with sterile tubes, students at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine fanned out across Canada's capital city collecting soil samples. They were on the hunt for "bacteriophages," viruses one-fortieth the size of a typical bacterium that bear a striking resemblance to landing alien spacecraft from a 1950s science fiction movie.