Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Jewish Business News

Science

TAU Researchers Identify Potential Weapon against Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Antibiotic-resistant infections are on the rise, foiling efforts to reduce death rates in developing countries where uncontrolled use of antibiotics and poor sanitation run amok. The epidemic of “superbugs, ” bacteria resistant to antibiotics, knows no borders — presenting a clear and present danger around the globe.

A groundbreaking discovery from Tel Aviv University researchers may strengthen efforts by the medical community to fight this looming superbug pandemic. By sequencing the DNA of bacteria resistant to viral toxins, TAU researchers identified novel proteins capable of stymieing growth in treacherous antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Please help us out :
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at office@jewishbusinessnews.com.
Thank you.

The research, published last month in PNAS, was led by Prof. Udi Qimron of the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and conducted primarily by TAU researcher Shahar Molshanski-Mor.

Fighting from within

“Because bacteria and bacterial viruses have co-evolved over billions of years, we suspected the viruses might contain precisely the weapons necessary to fight the bacteria, ” Prof. Qimron said. “So we systematically screened for such proteins in the bacterial viruses for over two and a half years.”

Using high-throughput DNA sequencing, the researchers located mutations in bacterial genes that resisted the toxicity of growth inhibitors produced by bacterial viruses. In this way, the team identified a new small protein, growth inhibitor gene product (Gp) 0.6, which specifically targets and inhibits the activity of a protein essential to bacterial cells.

The inhibitor was found to cripple the activity of a protein vital to bacterial cells — a protein that maintains the bacterial cell structure. Malfunction of this bacterial protein consequently resulted in the rupture and consequent death of the bacterial cell.

Technology and collaboration

“The new technology and our new interdisciplinary collaboration, drawing from bioinformatics and molecular biology, promoted our study more than we could have anticipated, ” said Prof. Qimron. “We hope our approach will be used to further identify new growth inhibitors and their targets across bacterial species and in higher organisms.”

The researchers are continuing their study of bacterial viruses in the hope of identifying compounds and processes that facilitate improved treatment of antibiotic-resistant bacteria using yet uncharacterized bacterial viruses’ proteins. They believe that further basic knowledge on bacterial viruses biology will eventually lead to unexpected breakthroughs in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Newsletter



Advertisement

You May Also Like

World News

In the 15th Nov 2015 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:   ·         A new Israeli treatment brings hope to relapsed leukemia...

Entertainment

The Movie The Professional is what made Natalie Portman a Lolita.

Travel

After two decades without a rating system in Israel, at the end of 2012 an international tender for hotel rating was published.  Invited to place bids...

VC, Investments

You may not become a millionaire, but there is a lot to learn from George Soros.