Bacteria had never been observed at a similar level of detail: now the outermost part of the membrane that surrounds them has no more secrets and could be the key to finding new, more effective antibiotics, that is, super-antibiotics capable of fighting super-bacteria. that are resistant to currently available drugs. Adding to the optimism is the fact that, a century after the discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin, its mechanism of action has finally been rebuilt.
Both findings are published in the US Academy of Sciences journal, PNAS. The first is due to the international group of cell biologists, microbiologists and nanotechnology experts coordinated by University College London and which includes King’s College London, the British University of Oxford and the US University of Princeton. Like a high-definition video, the images of living bacteria captured by the researchers manage to show hitherto unsuspected details.
For example, it has been seen that bacteria that have a protective outer layer, called Gram-negative bacteria, can have stronger and weaker points on their surface: areas made up of the building blocks that make up proteins alternate with areas that do not contain proteins, but molecules made of chains of sugars, called glycolipids, which keep the outer membrane taut. It is in these characteristics, note the researchers, led by Bart W. Hoogenboom of University College London, the key to being able to defeat antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as A. baumannii, P. aeruginosa, Salmonella and E. coli, have now become a real threat.
“The outermost part of the membrane that covers the bacteria is a formidable barrier against antibiotics – observes Hoogenboom – and an important factor in the process that makes a bacterium resistant to drugs. Until now it was not clear, however, how this barrier worked. this is why we have decided to analyze it in detail “. It was painstaking work, in which the researchers ran a tiny needle over the living colonies of Escherichia coli (E. coli), in order to perceive their shape. Since the tip of the needle is only a few nanometers wide, this made it possible to visualize the molecular structures on the outermost part of the membrane that surrounds them.
Complementary to this research is that carried out by the British University of Sheffield on the mechanism of action of penicillin, in which the group led by Simon Foster saw that the group of beta-lactam antibiotics (to which penicillin belongs) create holes in the outer membrane that surrounds the bacterial bacteria, which expands as it grows, thus killing the bacterium. This discovery, too, can now be used to develop new antibiotics against resistant bacteria.
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