Context of pharmacology as an ecological as well as a physiological phenomenon, with physiology in turn a manifestation of underlying genetics. Pharmacology literally is the exposure of an organism’s physiology to an environmental component, that is, a drug, and the study of organism-with-environment interactions literally defines ecology. Similar though arguably less complex “bubbles” can be placed around both bacterial pathogens and their viruses (e.g., Figure 6). Pharmacology thus is inherently eco-physiological while both the pharmaceutical treatment of distinct living entities, such as pathogens, and the use of drugs that themselves are living, particularly bacteriophages, introduces additional aspects of interface between ecology, physiology, and pharmacology.
