by Sarah Ca­mara-Wilpert and David Mayo-Muñoz — Bac­te­ria, just like hu­mans, are fre­quently in­fected by viruses (bac­te­rio­phages or phages). Phages repli­cate at the ex­pense of their hosts, killing them and the process re­leases hun­dreds of prog­eny into the en­vi­ron­ment to com­plete their life cy­cle. The end of bac­te­ria? Not so fast!