New way to clean up environmental pollution using phage bioaugmentation

The ability of bacteria to remove pollutants from soil, water, mine waste and other environments could be supercharged by a "friendly" compatible virus, according to a study led by Flinders University. The new insights, published in Communications Biology, suggest phage virus bioaugmentation offers a compelling new direction for environmental biotechnology by harnessing the ecological roles of lysogenic phages to enhance microbial function in polluted soils.