The essays in this special issue draw on a bank of diverse primary and secondary sources in different languages, to offer novel perspectives on the different directions that research on or with bacteriophages—bacterial viruses—has evolved over the century since they were first discovered. Looking beyond the established historical accounts of the discovery of the bacteriophages and their role as a tool in founding molecular biology, although these milestones are not ignored, papers in this volume offer insights into other investigative threads and figures that were either previously unknown or under-represented in history. Taken together they show that the bacteriophages have had a far richer and more diverse life in both scientific laboratories and written works than hitherto realized, and that more is yet to come.

本期特刊的文章以不同语言的大量主要和次要资源为基础，为人们对细菌噬菌体（细菌病毒）的研究或发展（自发现以来）的不同方向提供了新颖的见解。除了建立噬菌体的历史记载及其作为建立分子生物学工具的作用之外，尽管没有忽略这些里程碑，但本卷中的论文提供了其他调查线索和数据的见解，这些调查线索和数据以前是未知的，或者是-历史上的代表。两者合计表明，噬菌体在科学实验室和书面作品中的生活比以往更加丰富和多样，并且还有更多。