Antibiotic resistant bacteria are experts in evolving new strategies to avoid being killed by antibiotics. One such bacterium is Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is naturally found in soil and water, but also hospitals, nursing homes and similar institutions for persons with weakened immune systems are home for strains of this bacterium. As many P.
Aeruginosa strains found in hospitals are resistant to most antibiotics in use, science is forced to constantly search for new ways to kill them. Now, at team of researchers from Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Department of Clinical Microbiology, University of Southern Denmark, have discovered a weakness in P. Aeruginosa with the potential to become the target for a new way to attack it.
The team has published their findings in the journal Microbiology Spectrum, link https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.
1128/spectrum.03875-23.The authors are Clare Kirkpatrick, Magnus Z.
Østergaard, Flemming D. Nielsen and Mette H. Meinfeldt.
The team discovered a mechanism, that reduces the formation of biofilm on the surface of P. Aeruginosa . The formation of sticky, slimy biofilm is a powerful tool used by bacteria to protect themselves against antibiotics – a trick also used by P.
Aeruginosa. This biofilm can be so thick and gooey that antibiotic cannot penetrate the cell surface and reach its target inside the cell. Maybe one day, we could pharmacologically stimulate this mechanism to reduce biofilm development on the surface .