Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A bacteriophage.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun microbiology, virology A virus that is parasitic to bacteria.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a virus that is parasitic (reproduces itself) in bacteria

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Ancient Greek φαγητόν (phageton, "food, consumption"), from φαγεῖν aorist of ἐσθίω, ἔδω ("to eat, to consume").

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Examples

  • Another feature of the Cal Tech undergraduate education was the opportunity to take credits as reading which I did most quarters, reading the original literature in phage genetics and gene regulation.

    Leland H. Hartwell - Autobiography 2002

  • A phage is a virus that only attacks other bacteria.

    CNN Transcript Sep 19, 2006 2006

  • Because of their predominance, it is necessary to discriminate between the various serotypes in the course of epidemiological investigations and a fairly sophisticated technique called phage typing is used for this purpose in many countries.

    Chapter 2 1997

  • And therefore it is called phagiphania, of phage, that is to say meat.

    The Golden Legend, vol. 1 1230-1298 1900

  • A bacterium's immune system defends against viruses called phage.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2012

  • Here viruses that infect bacteria, called phage, are engineered such that each virus has on its surface coat a unique random peptide.

    NPR Topics: News 2010

  • Crab A, Meiring M, Pritchard D, Deckmyn H (2001) Identification of a collagen-binding protein from Necator americanus by using a cDNA-expression phage display library.

    PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Julien Muzard et al. 2009

  • A phage is a virus that infects bacteria, and starting fall semester, an initial cohort of 24

    unknown title 2009

  • But Comic Sans, which was part of the same release, is a true atrocity and has invaded the outside world like some kind of phage or slime.

    Typekit – the holy grail of web publishing « We Don't Count Your Own Visits To Your Blog 2010

  • Phages I know from nothing, so I asked some of my colleagues, who thought there are problems such as phage resistance and specificity, but evidently there is still some active research into phages.

    Americans Barely Pass Science Quiz - The Panda's Thumb 2005

  • Many of these viruses infect the bacteria that live inside you and are known as bacteriophages, or phages for short.

    Meet the trillions of viruses that make up your virome Chandrabali Ghose 2022

  • Indeed, there are recent anecdotal examples utilizing phages successfully to treat life-threatening infections from bacteria resistant to most if not all available antibiotics – a treatment known as phage therapy.

    Meet the trillions of viruses that make up your virome Chandrabali Ghose 2022

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  • Usage on pilus.

    October 4, 2008