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from the next-evolutionary-step:-biosuits-for-fungi dept.
Have you ever heard of biofilms? They are slimy, glue-like membranes that are produced by microbes, like bacteria and fungi, in order to colonize surfaces. They can grow on animal and plant tissues, and even inside the human body on medical devices such as catheters, heart valves, or artificial hips. Biofilms protect microbes from the body's immune system and increase their resistance to antibiotics. They represent one of the biggest threats to patients in hospital settings. But there is good news - a research team led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) has developed a novel enzyme technology that prevents the formation of biofilms and can also break them down.
This finding, recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), creates a promising avenue for the development of innovative strategies to treat a wide variety of diseases and hospital-acquired infections like pneumonia, bloodstream and urinary tract infection. Biofilm-associated infections are responsible for thousands of deaths across North America every year. They are hard to eradicate because they secrete a matrix made of sugar molecules which form a kind of armour that acts as a physical and chemical barrier, preventing antibiotics from reaching their target sites within microbes.
"We were able to use the microbe's own tools against them to attack and destroy the sugar molecules that hold the biofilm together," says the study's co-principal investigator, Dr. Don Sheppard, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the MUHC and scientist from the Infectious Diseases and Immunity in Global Health Program at the RI-MUHC. "Rather than trying to develop new individual 'bullets' that target single microbes we are attacking the biofilm that protects those microbes by literally tearing down the walls to expose the microbes living behind them. It's a completely new and novel strategy to tackle this issue."
No, this is not about movies on asexual reproduction shown in biology class, but removing an important impediment to anti-biotics.
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Friday June 23 2017, @07:17AM (3 children)
Animal cells construct their extracellular matrix from proteins such as fibronectin and collagen. It's unlikely the enzymes for bacterial biofilm sugars would much affect them, so long as they were specific for the sugar structured in the biofilm.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 23 2017, @07:28AM (2 children)
On which carbohydrates attaches by glycosylation - if my memory serves, this is the magic behind AB0 blood groups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday June 23 2017, @08:06AM (1 child)
so, do you lose your blood type antigens (and then get all the transfusion-of-wrong-blood problems), or do you just get the blood breaking down (in the absence of the structure provided by the sugar molecules)?
blood attacking blood ("clumping"), or, just, death...?
http://mentalfloss.com/article/59644/how-blood-type-determined [mentalfloss.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Friday June 23 2017, @07:41PM
Hypothetically speaking if the biofilm destroying enzyme just cleaved the sugars off of the blood cells it would essentially just temporarily turn your blood cells into type O, which is nearly a universal donor (ie it doesn't react to type A or type B blood cells). It wouldn't turn your type A cells to B or vice versa so it shouldn't cause clumping/clotting. (There are other factors in addition to blood type that can cause reactions though so I'd have to go review to state with certainty.)