bacterial infections

Researchers in Lund have recently discovered an antitoxin mechanism that may be able to protect bacteria against virus attacks by neutralizing hundreds of toxins. Understanding this antitoxin mechanism, named the Panacea, could be the next step to the future success of phage therapy, a treatment for antibiotic resistant infections.

These toxin-antitoxin mechanisms are a kind of on-off switch in bacterial DNA genomes. They are found to attack bacteriophages to defend bacteria.This activation of toxins allows bacteria to “lockdown” and limit growth and spreading of a virus. In order for Phage therapy to be successful in the future, it is important to understand these mechanisms in great depth. The goal of Phage therapy is to use viruses to treat bacterial infections. A toxin dramatically inhibits bacterial growth and an adjacent gene encoding an antitoxin counteracts the toxic effect. Although toxin-antitoxin pairs have been associated with new toxins or antitoxins before, the ability of the Panacea is unprecedented.

As research continues on toxin-antitoxin systems and phage therapy it is clear that what we know is just the tip of the iceberg. As bacteria increasingly become resistant to antibiotics, other approaches are needed to help eliminate infections. The next steps of this research is to continue deepening the understanding of the Panacea and finding toxin-antitoxin systems on a universal scale.

In AP biology class we learned about inhibitors. An inhibitor is something that slows down or prevents a particular reaction or process. A toxin inhibits bacteria from growing and reproducing so the antitoxin can act against the virus that has already spread.

We’ve all suffered from a nasty bacterial infection of some sort, like strep or a sinus infection. Usually, we go to the doctor and are prescribed antibiotics, and are cured in a few days. The problem with this is that bacteria are becoming multi-drug resistant and skipping over weaker antibiotics and immediately using stronger ones to increase the effectiveness. This is because to test out if an infection is resistant to antibiotics, a doctor would have to send a sample to a lab and wait 2-3 days for the results (Fore more information on standard bacterial lab tests, click here). The more antibiotics that are overused and misused, the more super-bugs (multi-drug resistant bacteria) will emerge.

Luckily, there is a new advancement in testing bacterias resistance to antibiotics. A new test has been developed at Caltech that can identify antibiotics resistant bacteria in as little as thirty minutes. The test was focused on UTI’s; they took a sample of infected urine and divided into two groups. One group was incubated, and the other was exposed to antibiotics for fifteen minutes. The bacteria were then lysed, or broken down, to release their cellular contents. The contents are then run through a process combining d-LAMP and Slip chips. This process replicates specific DNA markers which are imaged and counted as fluorescent spots on the chip.

This Photo is credited to Wikipedia

The logic behind this test is that antibiotics affects the DNA replication of bacteria, so there will be less fluorescent spots on the chip for bacteria that is not resistant to bacteria. If the DNA are resistant to bacteria, the DNA replication, fluorescent spots, will be the same in both groups. The tests had a 95% match with the standard two day test, (hyperlink info about standard test) and was tested on 54 subjects with UTI’s caused by the same bacteria, Escherischia Coli.

The creators of this test, Ismagilov, Schoepp, and Travis Schlappi, are continuing to test other bacterial infections, and hope to modify the test to be able to test blood infections. Blood infections are more difficult to test because the presence of bacteria in blood is significantly less than in urine. Having a test like this, for many types of different bacteria, which could be performed in one doctors visit would help reduce the overuse and misuse of bacteria, thus decreasing the chance of new superbugs emerging.

For more information and visuals click here.

BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Tag: bacterial infections

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