Kreuvfs Allerweltsblog

Licht aus für Brucella

Man hat entdeckt, dass einige Bakterienarten erst so richtig in Fahrt kommen, wenn Licht vorhanden ist. Man erhofft sich aus dieser Erkenntnis neue Therapieansätze für z. B. Brucellosen.

[…]
The bacterial sensors are closely related to phototropins—the light receptor molecules that cause a plant to grow toward a light source. They share a protein sequence called a LOV (pronounced “love”) domain, so named because it can detect light, oxygen, and/or voltage. Briggs and his colleagues were the first to discover and describe plant LOV domains in 1998.
[…]
In the case of B. abortus, and possibly others, the presence of a LOV domain is more than mere coincidence. When the researchers disabled the LOV-domain protein gene in this species, its virulence—measured as the ability to reproduce efficiently enough to cause disease—dropped to less than 10% of normal, “wild-type” bacteria.
[…]
“Our work is the first ever to demonstrate a light-activated histidine kinase in a bacterium and demonstrate that it plays an essential role in bacterial virulence.”

Quelle: Nasty bacteria need sunlight to do their worst – EurekAlert.org
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