Phage-host interaction: an ecological perspective

Many researchers speak of a "new age of phage research." It is now realized that phages play an important role in ecology (e.g., phage impact on the cycling of organic matter in the biosphere at a global level), that phages influence the evolution of bacterial genomes (most obviously in the development of bacterial pathogenicity), and that phages might provide potential tools to face the antibiotic resistance crisis in medicine. With this new trend, we now see a clear shift from the reductionist approach, focusing on a handful of phages in carefully controlled laboratory conditions, towards the study of many different phages in the complexity of real-life situations.