Do you want to know what’s in your kitchen sponge? The kitchen sponge. Most people use one every day, despite the knowledge that sponges often harbor more germs and #bacteria than they wash away. Yet, this petri dish of household convenience could provide answers to the growing concern about #antibiotic resistance. More and more, researchers like molecular #biologist Bryan Gibb, Ph.D., assistant #professor of life sciences at #NYIT College of Arts and #Sciences, are pushing for alternative means to fight bacterial infections. Focusing on #bacteriophages, Gibb recently enlisted undergraduate students to experiment with kitchen sponges in order to find and determine bacteriophages’ ability to target #microbes. Bacteriophages—viruses that naturally infect bacteria—were discovered in the early 1900s and have been used therapeutically in the former Soviet Union and Central Europe for more than 90 years. “In the West, this is kind of a lost art that’s gaining some new traction,” says Gibb. ...