Scientists on Reddit

Heather Hendrickson

Microbiologist studying phages

u/Heather_Hendrickson ↗AMA only

How we know it's theirs

The 2016 r/science AMA, posted from this account

We retrieved 1 post and 38 comments from u/Heather_Hendrickson, all from 2016, most often in r/science.

Best moment

A redditor wrote in r/science

On “Science AMA Series: I'm Heather Hendrickson, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biosciences at Massey University in Aukland, New Zealand. I'm here to answer questions about bacterial resistance and the future of health. AMA!”

Furthermore, what are some of the options that are not currently being explored that may prove to hold some interesting results in the near future?

u/Heather_Hendrickson replied

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One of the ideas that I really like in this arena is actually an old one that has been in use in Russia and Georgia for decades. They still use viruses. These are called bacteriophages, the viruses that specifically attack particular bacterial strains. Bacteriophages are highly targeted in the bacteria that they destroy so I like to compare them to ninjas or trained assassins. Once in a complex system like a microbiome (the trillions of bacteria that live inside us and support our health) a bacteriophage army would only destroy that bacteria that are making us ill. This is very different from broad spectrum antibiotics that can be more like a nuclear bomb going off in our internal ecosystem: many casualties!

More moments

A redditor wrote in r/science

What's to stop a virus that's been implanted from mutating such that it's no longer beneficial, or perhaps even now harmful to the host?

u/Heather_Hendrickson replied

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Bacteriophages have had 2 billion years to start infecting humans and they haven't yet. To be honest, this isn't a big surprise ... there are WAY more bacterial cells on the planet to attack than there are human cells! Also, taking over a bacterial cell is relatively easy, the DNA and all of the working machinery is just sitting in the cell. Eukaryotic cells (like ours) have the DNA wrapped up and hidden in an extra organelle. Too complicated! Infecting bacteria is a pretty great job (if you can get it). At least , that is what the bacteriophages tell me.