Scientists have discovered two key proteins that guide one of the two groups of pathogenic bacteria to make their hardy outer shells -- their defense against the world.
The work, they said, could allow researchers to create new antibiotics against gram-negative bacteria, like E. coli and salmonella, that would destroy these bacteria by disabling the mechanism that produces their protective coating.
"A long-term goal is to find inhibitors of these proteins we have discovered," said Natividad Ruiz, a research molecular biologist at Princeton University and the lead author on the paper describing the work. "Small molecule inhibitors could become antibiotics that subvert the outer membrane."
The research, conducted by Ruiz, Thomas Silhavy, Princeton's Warner-Lambert Parke-Davis Professor of Molecular Biology, and others from Harvard University, is described in the online edition of the April 8 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team discovered the proteins through an extended process of elimination. The scientists looked at microbes in the guts of carpenter ants. The bacteria, which have lived there for millions of years -- passed on over many generations -- have lost many of the traits necessary for survival in the outer world. As a result, their collection of genes, known as a genome, is far smaller and simpler than the genome of E. coli.
Scientists sequenced the genome of the model bacterium E. coli 11 years ago, yet they still do not understand the functions of about 40 percent of the thousands of proteins produced by those genes, according to Ruiz. Proteins are the workhorses of cells, directing and producing the creation of many key cell structures and functions.