Sunday, March 13, 2005
Mob Management
Chemists at the University of Wisconsin in Madison are working on miniscule chemical warfare agents that can disrupt communication between bacteria and prevent disease outbreak.
The scientists said their goal was to thwart the rise of "bacterial mobs," more mundanely known as biofilms. Such dangerous bug colonies thrive in hospitals and are sometimes resistant to the most powerful antibiotics. They can cause many lethal infections, like attacking the lungs of post-op cystic fibrosis patients, even crop up on sterilized medical implants.
The scientists said the bug mobs "have long baffled doctors because of their stupefying capacity to behave like a 'super-organism' that vetoes the normal characteristics of a bacterial cell in favor of new group behaviors." Said team member Helen Blackwell: "It's amazing that such simple organisms as bacteria can form these super-colonies that work together in such sophisticated ways."
Trying to outsmart the bugs, the scientists learned that germs sense each other and the overall density of their colony "by continuously exchanging small molecules [called acylated homoserine lactones] and peptides - a process known as quorum sensing. Past a certain density threshold, the colonies unite to initiate group behaviors, such as biofilm formation." Hence the researchers started working on chemicals to disrupt the communication and hijack the mob by piping in their own commands. "We want to design molecules to confuse bacteria so they can't sense their neighbors," says Blackwell, "but some types of quorum sensing are beneficial, so we are simultaneously searching for compounds that selectively turn on group behaviors."
The findings have been presented today at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society held in San Diego.
The scientists said their goal was to thwart the rise of "bacterial mobs," more mundanely known as biofilms. Such dangerous bug colonies thrive in hospitals and are sometimes resistant to the most powerful antibiotics. They can cause many lethal infections, like attacking the lungs of post-op cystic fibrosis patients, even crop up on sterilized medical implants.
The scientists said the bug mobs "have long baffled doctors because of their stupefying capacity to behave like a 'super-organism' that vetoes the normal characteristics of a bacterial cell in favor of new group behaviors." Said team member Helen Blackwell: "It's amazing that such simple organisms as bacteria can form these super-colonies that work together in such sophisticated ways."
Trying to outsmart the bugs, the scientists learned that germs sense each other and the overall density of their colony "by continuously exchanging small molecules [called acylated homoserine lactones] and peptides - a process known as quorum sensing. Past a certain density threshold, the colonies unite to initiate group behaviors, such as biofilm formation." Hence the researchers started working on chemicals to disrupt the communication and hijack the mob by piping in their own commands. "We want to design molecules to confuse bacteria so they can't sense their neighbors," says Blackwell, "but some types of quorum sensing are beneficial, so we are simultaneously searching for compounds that selectively turn on group behaviors."
The findings have been presented today at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society held in San Diego.
