Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Breakthrough

The discovery of bacteria’s “Achilles heel” could lead to the development of new drugs, experts have claimed.

20:42 28 March 2016

The discovery of “Achilles heel”, which is a crucial step in bacteria’s energy metabolism, could lead to the development of drugs that exploit this inherent weakness in the bugs.

 

Study author Dr Nikos Hatzakis said: ‘I believe the leaking mechanism acts as a safety valve in the bacteria.

 

‘If we can design a drug which targets such safety valve in proton pumps, it would be a very powerful antibiotic indeed, so the leak state is a serious weakness, an Achilles heel.’

 

In order for the bacteria to cause imbalance betwee the pH value, it must pump protons in and out of their cells. As such, the team of scientists manipulated the pH and found that when the bacteria becomes sour inside, there is a tendency for the pumps to leak.

 

Researcher Sune Jorgensen said: ‘We wanted to be able to control the pump: To turn it on and off.

‘In order to do that, we constructed a miniscule electrode [and] coated the microscope slide with 30 nanometers of gold.

 

‘This is thin enough to see through, but electrically conductive, so it allowed us to switch the pump on and off with an electrical current.’