A Seattle DNA analysis startup is taking on a project with global ambitions with $5.5 million in new funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Phase Genomics will catalog the diversity of viruses that infect bacteria in samples from the human gut and wastewater. The team will determine which viruses infect which bacteria worldwide, addressing “one of the largest blind spots in biology,” said CEO Ivan Liachko in an interview with GeekWire.
The resulting database could be used to develop new therapeutics and potentially to build a surveillance system to detect microbial threats and respond to them.
Viruses that infect bacteria, called bacteriophages, are everywhere. They can produce gut-busting toxins or encode antibiotic resistance genes, and they can also prey on bacteria and kill them. There are an estimated 1031 bacteriophage on the planet: they are the earth’s most abundant and diverse biological entities, scientists say.
