Publication Highlight
Looking at the bacterial artillery
This publication highlight is part of the SBGrid/Meharry Medical College Communities Project, focused on science education and demonstrating how structural biology and preclinical science connect to medicine.
There is a constant arms race between living matter. Each generation, microbes find novel ways of infiltrating and disabling their host. The rapid evolution cycles of microbes allow them to continually evade current medications and increase virulance. To better understand how bacteria are becoming resistant to our meticulously researched medications, we must continue to pursue a better understanding of microbe infectious machinery. Bacteria have a multitude of approaches to attack our bodies, some of which are still a mirage. In a recent paper from SBGrid member Dr. Matteo Dal Peraro of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, Dr. Dal Peraro and colleagues pursue an atomic level understanding of a virulence factor found across bacterial genomes.
During infection, bacteria secrete a series of proteins and small molecules to disturb the host’s immune system and cause damage to the host’s body. One of these proteins, called Aerolysin, attaches to host cells and punches holes in the cell membrane. Using a very powerful technique called cryogenic electron microscopy, the authors investigated how aerolysin accomplishes thse feats. Previous studies showed what aerolysin looked like when it was secreted by bacteria, but Dr. Dal Peraro and colleagues were able to obtain the first high-resolution structure of what aerolysin looks like when it embeds and attacks host membranes. This finding provides insight into how aerolysin works at disrupting and attacking the human body and how we might fight back one day.
Read more in JACS.
By Vida Robertson, California Institute of Technology
Vida Robertson is a first-year doctoral student at Caltech studying Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. Vida has completed an undergraduate degree in Biology from Texas A&M University-Commerce and a Masters degree in Chemistry from Fisk University. He enjoys researching new imaging techniques in electron microscopy.
