Viral enzyme tackles strep throat

From Los Angeles, at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology

With shapes reminiscent of the Apollo lunar landers, viruses called bacteriophages settle

onto a bacterium and inject their genes. This viral DNA makes the bacterium churn out new

copies of the phages, as well as an enzyme that destroys the bacterium’s cell wall so that the

phages can spread to other bacteria.