Cell architecture comes to phage biology

SummaryNothing is more iconic of the early days of molecular biology than the image of a bacteriophage infecting an Escherichia coli cell. It is perhaps surprising therefore that more than 50 years later, it is still possible to learn something entirely new and unexpected about how phage infection works, as we see in the paper by Edgar et al. of this issue of Molecular Microbiology. The results give fundamental new insight into the way these viruses infect their hosts and promise to open new windows on the virus–host interactions that have shaped the evolution of both.