Wild Bacteriophages

In one of the classes that I teach, the students do some preliminary characterization of phages (viruses that infect bacteria) that they have isolated from soil or fecal samples (collected from plant-eating animals only -- deer, rabbits, horses).

This is an electron microscope image (courtesy of Tom Harper, the excellent director of the electron microscope facility) of a purified sample of one of the wild phages.

You can view more electron micrographs at the class wiki -- wildphage pbwiki.