Antimicrobial Resistance: New Study Discovers That Bacteria Connect to Exchange DNA and Fight Antibiotics Making Curable Illness Fatal

Researchers have discovered new insights about how bacteria connect to exchange DNA that helps them fight antibiotics.

One of the most common methods for hazardous bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance is to get DNA from bacteria that are already resistant. This DNA transfer is accomplished by a process known as conjugation, which is similar to bacterial sex, in which two bacteria develop an intimate bond and one donates a packet of DNA to the other.

It is critical because antibiotic resistance is causing illnesses that were once curable to become fatal. According to the O'Neill analysis, which was commissioned by the UK government, by 2050, 10 million fatalities might be due to antibiotic-resistant bacterium infection. Researchers may be able to create novel techniques to reduce the emergence of antibiotic resistance by better understanding the molecular basis of bacterial conjugation.

Researchers published the study's findings, "Mating pair stabilization mediates bacterial conjugation species specificity," in Nature Microbiology.

Antimicrobial Resistance An 'Acute Problem'

Professor Gad Frankel of Imperial College's Department of Life Sciences and the MRC Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection, who led the study, said in a Phys.org report that "The spread of antimicrobial resistance is an acute problem affecting human health globally, and we urgently need new tools to fight it."

Frankel noted that understanding and eventually blocking the process by which bacteria share their ability to dodge antimicrobial treatments would go a long way toward halting the emergence of resistance.

Plasmids are DNA packets that reside inside bacterial cells and multiply independently of the chromosomal DNA. They have a modest number of genes that can encode for various roles, including antimicrobial drug resistance.

During conjugation, the scientists discovered that a protein from the donor bacterium called TraN serves as a 'plug' to connect itself to a specific outer membrane receptor, or "socket," in recipient bacteria. Plasmids exchanged through conjugation express one of four TraN variations, each of which binds to a distinct outer membrane receptor in the recipient bacterium, allowing for effective plasmid transfer from one cell to the next.

Imperial researchers collaborated with colleagues at the University of Virginia in the United States to visualize the intimate attachment process using high-power cryo-electron microscopy and structural biologists from Imperial. Using recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and bioinformatics, the researchers examined the TraN proteins of numerous resistance plasmids and the recipient bacterium receptors for many key human bacterial infections.

How Bacterial Mating Helps People Predict Pathogen Spread

Study first author Wen Wen Low of Imperial College's Department of Life Sciences and the MRC Centre for Molecular Microbiology and Infection said in a Science Daily report that these protein-receptor combinations explain conjugation species-specificity.

Dr. Konstantinos Beis, a co-author from Imperial College's Department of Life Sciences and the Harwell Research Complex in Oxfordshire, said the findings are a significant step forward in understanding how conjugative mating pairs form and will help people predict the spread of emerging resistance plasmids into high-risk bacterial pathogens.

The researchers are still looking at TraN's interactions with receptors, such as what drives plasmid specialization and how conjugation dynamics and preferences play out in mixed microbial communities. They believe the research may pave the way for new techniques to combat antibiotic resistance.

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