Researchers drive bacteria to commit suicide
A new approach to combating resistance offers hope for previously incurable infections, which are often a major problem in hospitals and other institutions.
Certain bacteria commit suicide, so to speak, when they are attacked by destructive viruses in order to protect fellow bacteria from these same viruses. Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine are using this mechanism, known as the cyclic oligonucleotide-based antiphage signaling system (CBASS), to fight bacterial infections in humans.
Fight against superbacteria
"We wanted to see how the bacterial self-killing CBASS system is activated and whether it can be used to contain bacterial infections," says Aneel Aggarwal, Professor of Pharmacological Sciences.
"This is a new approach to combating bacterial infections, which are a major problem in hospitals and other facilities. It is important to find new tools to combat antibiotic resistance. In the fight against superbugs, we need to constantly innovate and expand our toolkit to stay one step ahead of evolving drug resistance."
Signaling molecule triggers suicide
The researchers have investigated how the protein called "Cap5" is activated and how it could be used to control bacterial infections through a combination of structural analysis and various biophysical, biochemical and cellular studies.
Cap5 is a key protein that is activated by cyclic nucleotides (small signaling molecules) to destroy the DNA of its own bacterial cell. The team then searched for the signaling molecule that performs the activation. They then inoculated bacteria that needed to be combated with this molecule so that the bacterial suicide was triggered.
It remains to be seen how these findings can be applied to the real-life treatment of people with an infection. According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur in the United States every year, killing over 35,000 people.
