tiny bacterial parasites could serve as models for drugs effective against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, providing another line of defense against the threat of incurable diseases.

The bacterial viruses, or bacteriophages, produce proteins that prevent bacteria from building an outer cell wall, reported researchers from Texas a&m University in the us. This disruption of the cell wall weakens and ultimately kills the bacteria cell.

The discovery of this bacteria-killing mechanism in the smallest viruses is a "milestone in our quest for antibiotics,' says Sankar Adhya, chief of developmental genetics at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, md . The simplicity of the mechanism suggests a quicker route to designing new antibiotics that can continue to be effective against bacterial resistance.

Researchers have long known that phages with larger genomes break out of bacterial cells with the help of an endolysin