Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Nicholas Carter
Foreword: The following is a piece of coursework I produced in my final year of my
Biochemistry degree for the module ‘Microbial Cell Biology’. The challenge was to summarise
a scientific paper in no more than 300 words for an audience without a scientific
background. For this piece of work I achieved 90%.
Interfering with bacterial communication
could provide improved antibiotic treatments
Who’s the biggest chatterbox you know? You’re
probably more likely to think of the ladies on ‘Loose
Women’ than the bacteria in your gut. Increasingly
however, these single-celled organisms are being
shown to talk with one another in a variety of ways.
It’s hardly a surprising concept considering there are
100 trillion bacteria in your gut alone, 10 times more
than the number of cells in your entire body.
Of course bacteria don’t actually speak to one another; rather they produce molecules
which can be detected by other bacteria and cause a response. One such molecule is indole
which is produced by E. coli and increases the resistance of these bacteria to antibiotics
(medicines which kill bacteria).
A recent scientific study suggested that if indole increases antibiotic tolerance in E. coli, then
it could also do the same to pathogenic (bad) bacteria which invade the body and cause
diseases. S. Typhimurium is one such pathogen which is a major cause of food poisoning and
can be particularly dangerous in people with damaged immune systems, such as HIV
sufferers. It doesn’t produce indole itself but has been shown to respond to signalling
molecules from other species of bacteria. This study looked at E. coli and S. Typhimurium in
the intestine of C. elegans, a transparent worm which is often used in experiments to help
understand what might happen in humans. They found that antibiotic resistance of
S. Typhimurium did in fact increase as a result of indole produced by E. coli.
Some forms of S. Typhimurium have evolved to become resistant to certain antibiotics. If we
can find a way to prevent indole production by E. coli, we could potentially make these
pathogenic bacteria more sensitive to current antibiotics and save the lives of people with a
high risk of infection.
