The Good Virus: The Untold Story of Phages: The Most Abundant Life Forms on Earth and What They Can Do For Us

by Tom Ireland

And now for the really neat part: the components spontaneously self-assemble, pushed and pulled into shape by the tiny attractive and repellent forces of the molecules they are made up of, while other special proteins encoded in the phage’s genes act as scaffolds or guide the various components into place. A molecular motor at the top of the tail packs the long length of DNA – which doesn’t naturally want to coil or fold into a tight space – so tightly into the phage’s heads that scientists estimate the pressure inside them to be thirty times higher than a car tyre.38 It’s both a meticulous and miraculous process, like a giant bin full of doll parts all suddenly sticking themselves together into complete models.