Wednesday, March 1, 2017

How Infectious Bacteria Colonize our Intestines

A recent study from Hebrew University shows the specific mechanisms for how bacteria are able to colonize a host. By utilizing a pathogenic strain of E. coli, the researchers were able to determine that the bacteria feel the proteins on the surface of where they are traveling. When they feel proteins that are present in the intestines, they implant themselves and start to undergo gene expression. Certain genes in their genome only express after they have implanted themselves in the intestines. They get the energy for this gene expression by feeding off of the host cell's metabolism, making them behave similar to a virus. I found this article particularly interesting because it gives us more insight as to how bacteria are able to colonize their hosts. This research could potentially help medical researchers to figure out new and more effective ways of treating bacterial infections.




http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6326/735.full 

1 comment:

  1. Its very interesting how bacteria "feels" its way through our body. Hopefully they can study this further and try to manipulate the bacteria to target unwanted disease in the body.

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