Community post

Gabriel Almeida (University of Jyvaskyla, Finland) and colleagues have published a paper showing that phages of the fish pathogen Flavobacterium columnare bind to mucus, providing new support for the 'bacteriophage adherence to mucus' (BAM) model. What's more, they saw that mucus increased bacterial virulence and phage susceptibility, suggesting an interesting ecological trade-off. And as a useful side-note, this study led to a solution for a decades-long struggle to propagate F. columnare phages in the lab - just add mucus!