Semms like another opportunity to say "What could possibly go wrong?"

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Bdellovibrio, the cannibalistic drug coming to humanity’s rescue
"Ferocious predators that consume almost all of their prey" are used for good.
Mallory Locklear - 10/16/2016

Bdellovibrio isn’t your average kind of bacteria.

“It has a psychological problem,” jokes Robert Mitchell, a microbiologist and an associate professor at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. “It thinks it’s a virus.”

Though it may have an identity crisis, Bdellovibrio has managed to spread to a wide range of environments, including soil, bodies of water, animals, plants, and humans. And its unique set of oddities has made it rather appealing to researchers, many of whom have realized its potential utility—biomedically, industrially, even environmentally.

Scientists are exploring all sorts of ways to use these Bdellovibrio, largely inspired by its rather strange life cycle. Typically, bacteria work pretty simply. Once they get to an environment with useful nutrients, they spend some time preparing for growth and then they reproduce. Their reproduction is rapid and usually accomplished via binary fission: they split themselves, forming two identical clones.

But Bdellovibrio is parasitic; it reproduces by attacking other bacteria. “It can only finish its life cycle by preying on other bacteria,” says Daniel Kadouri, an associate professor in the Center for Oral Infectious Diseases at Rutgers University. First, the bacterium attaches to the outside of a bacterial cell and drills a hole through the outer membrane. It then enters the cell and begins dissolving and consuming the host cell’s proteins and nucleic acids. “It sits between the inner and outer membranes and starts secreting enzymes that will basically break down the prey from the inside,” Kadouri told Ars. Finally, after feeding on its prey, dividing, and producing multiple progeny, the bacteria burst out of the host cell, tearing it apart in the process.

And Bdellovibrio is very efficient in all this. According to Kadouri, “From one Bdellovibrio bacterium coming in, you can get several coming out.”

So what exactly does science want with a bacteria that eats other bacteria better than any other? Plenty.

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http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/one-cannibalistic-bacteria-is-coming-to-save-us-from-its-drug-resistant-brethren/