Milestones in order. This is history, not a weekly activity grid.
- Twort's glassy colonies
- d'Hérelle names phage
- Eliava Institute
- Luria–Delbrück
- Hershey–Chase
- MS2 RNA phage
- CRISPR spacer proof
- Compassionate phage cases
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
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Quick answers
Where should I start with Bacteriophages?
Read Identity → How they live → Body & health, then use compare rails.
Is this page advice for Bacteriophages?
Public-health education — not a care plan, prescription, or outbreak briefing.
What does the local lens add?
It names everyday desks for Tree of microbes before English norms look universal.
Are the scores a ranking of Bacteriophages?
No — editorial 0–100 browsing aids inside this atlas only.
How do I compare Bacteriophages to neighbours?
Use related cards and best-of / quiz rails after the first three chapters.
Which chapter is densest?
How they live and Body & health carry mechanisms; skim Identity first.
Bacteriophage history runs from Twort (1915) and Félix d’Hérelle (1917) through mid-century clinical use and today’s sequencing-era revival. Independent observations in 1915–1917 showed something that ate bacterial colonies. Félix d'Hérelle named bacteriophage and tried therapy before antibiotics existed.
Western clinics largely switched to antibiotics after the 1940s. The Soviet and Georgian schools kept phage collections. Molecular biology was born in phage labs in between.
Timeline
Frederick Twort describes glassy dissolution of micrococci — an early phage observation.
Félix d'Hérelle coins bacteriophage and begins therapeutic attempts in Paris.
George Eliava's Tbilisi school builds a lasting phage-medicine tradition.
Fluctuation tests with phages prove bacterial mutations are random, not directed.
T2 blender experiments settle DNA as hereditary material.
A tiny RNA phage becomes a model; its genome is later the first fully sequenced (1976).
Barrangou and colleagues show spacers confer phage resistance in Streptococcus thermophilus.
Documented last-resort cases return phage therapy to Western journals — still not a home kit.
Today's headlines recycle an old idea with new sequencing. The ethics stay clinical, not do-it-yourself.
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