Antibiotic-resistant bacteria constitute, according to the World Health Organization, one of the greatest global threats. These microorganisms, for which there is no treatment, kill about 700,000 people each year . If an adequate strategy is not developed to deal with this problem, the figure could rise to 10 million in 2050, according to a study launched in 2016 by the British Government and the Wellcome Trust Foundation. Now, a team of researchers from the University of East Anglia in England and the Institute of Structural Biology in France have shed some light on one of the issues that has been troubling microbiologists for a long time and that may be essential in the development of new antibiotics: how are these pathogens able to survive an encounter with our immune system?
In a study published in the journal Nature Communications , these scientists claim to have identified the structure of a bacterial protein called NsrR. This can be combined with DNA and plays a determining role in the resistance that microbes develop to nitric oxide (NO), a compound that is toxic to many organisms and that occurs when an infection occurs, in the initial moments of the response immune.
Although many bacteria have developed a kind of natural sensor that allows them to detect NO and activate a cellular response, this initiative is the first to determine how the regulatory protein NsrR combines or not with DNA to control the activation or deactivation of , so to speak, a kind of NO-fighting enzyme production system.
According to a statement by Nick Le Brun, one of the co-authors of the trial, professor of biological chemistry at the aforementioned English university, “NsrR belongs to an important but little known family of regulators. Many are known to contain a group of iron- sulfur, but with our work we have provided the first sample of a structure with these types of bonds, as well as the general mechanism that explains how these regulators respond to different signals. Furthermore, we have been able to observe that the group is bound to the protein of a a way that has not been observed before in biology . “
The tactic that pathogens follow to survive our immune response is a very complex process. However, for Le Brun, “with each step we take to understand it, the greater the possibility of developing strategies to combat it.”
Imagen: Volker Brinkmann / CC
