麻豆淫院

Bacteria are constantly moving with the help of motility organs called flagella or pili to colonize new niches. Also, bacteria can exchange information, like "speaking to each other," and thus acquire new abilities through the exchange of DNA materials.

These motility organs play important roles in DNA uptake to exchange genetic information between different bacteria, allowing what's so-called genomic plasticity. Therefore, bacterial motility organs contribute to bacterial pathogenicity, colonizing hosts, biofilm formation and the spread of antibiotic resistance.

In joint studies, scientists at Heinrich Heine University D眉sseldorf (HHU) and University of T眉bingen, as well as Gie脽en University, Freiburg University, Max Planck Institute for Biology T眉bingen, US National Institutes of Health, and New Jersey Medical School, have discovered a new family of signaling proteins, widespread in bacterial kingdom and contributes to regulating bacterial motility and DNA uptake mechanisms.

The researchers reported their finding in two publications in the journals and .

In these two studies, the research team led by Professor Dr. Khaled Selim (Institute of Phototrophic Microbiology at HHU and T眉bingen Cluster of Excellence CMFI) revealed that the second messenger molecules (c-di-GMP and c-di-AMP), together with the newly discovered ComFB receptor protein, regulates both bacterial motility and DNA uptake, therefore possibly contributing to bacterial pathogenicity.

Ph.D. student Sherihan Samir, the first author of both publications said, "The ability of different ComFB proteins from various bacteria to bind and precisely integrate the motility/DNA uptake signal(s) is reported by the second messenger di-nucleotides (c-di-GMP and c-di-AMP)."

These characteristics were found in cyanobacteria, Bacillus subtilis and Vibrio cholerae, the causative agent of Cholera outbreak.

Prof. Selim said, "c-di-AMP belongs to one of the relatively newly discovered class of cyclic dinucleotide-type second messengers, whose cellular functions are not yet fully understood. In these studies, we show that the ComFB proteins sense c-di-AMP and additionally c-di-GMP and are essential for regulating the natural competence and bacterial motility."

The term "natural competence" describes the ability of bacterial cells to uptake DNA molecules and integrate them into their own genome to exchange genetic information between each other. This process, for example, contributes mainly to spreading antibiotic resistance from initially only a few bacteria to entire populations, and also across different species boundaries.

It is still unclear which other groups of bacteria鈥攂esides the bacteria studied鈥攁lso use this mechanism. "If pathogenic bacteria with clinical relevance also use it, this could pave the way for new strategies to fight multi-resistant bacteria," Selim said.