Reviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc.Oct 3 2023 During the COVID-19 pandemic, people became well aware that viruses can be extremely harmful. But can viruses also be helpful?An assistant professor of biological sciences, Hsu was the recipient of a five-year $1.9 million Maximizing Investigators' Research Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to develop a model to test the role of these lytic bacteriophages, or phages, as they are commonly called, in the mammalian gut.
Hsu and his team of researchers in the College of Science plan to remove lytic phages without affecting the bacteria inside a mammalian gut. This has been done in a culture dish, but it has not been done inside a mammal. Gut microbiomes are generally specific to individual mammals, but when mice are housed together, sharing a cage and bedding contributes to similar microbiomes. Hsu's team will work with two groups of such mice. One group will go through phage depletion protocol and then will be given phages extracted from another group via fecal transplants.