◎ Half of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by a bacteria in the ocean called cyanobacteria. Viral cyanophages live alongside the cyanobacteria, outnumbering them ten to one and produce another five percent of the atmospheric oxygen.
◎ In 2017, a group of American scientists discovered that the Zika virus could preferentially infect and kill glioblastoma (a type of brain cancer) cells. Scientists are hoping to genetically modify the viral strain for therapeutic use.
◎ In the wake of the antibiotic resistance crisis, "phage therapy" has resurfaced as a possible alternative to antibiotics. Viral phage therapy is the therapeutic use of bacteriophages to treat pathogenic bacterial infections. Bacteriophages, aka phages, are viruses. Phages attach to bacterial cells and inject their DNA (or RNA) into the cell. The viral DNA replaces the bacterial DNA, thereby halting bacterial replication. The phages then use the bacterial cells to replicate more viral particles. As the bacterial cells fill with viral particles, they eventually lyse and die, and the bacterial infection is effectively ended. see: “How Do Viruses Replicate?”