With Good Reason

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They are everywhere you look — in the soil, in the ocean, in your backyard.  Bacteriophages.  They’re viruses that infect bacteria, and they could one day be used to fight off drug-resistant strains of bacteria like tuberculosis.   Mark Forsyth, Margaret Saha, and Kurt Williamson (College of William and Mary) lead a group of students into the field every year to find and identify new varieties of “phages.”   With Good Reason visits their “phage lab.”  It’s one of 36 schools across the country sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the samples they collect — some never before seen — are helping to create one of the largest databases of its kind in the world.  Also featured: One day — in the not-so-distant future – the world will run out of oil.  Scientists and researchers are in a race against time to solve our current and future energy needs.  Patrick Hatcher (Old Dominion University), director of the Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium, hasn’t given up on wind energy as a solution — but thinks the most promising renewable energy source might be biofuel made with algae.   He says algae farms the size of Maryland could power every car in the country.