Tuesday, 22 June 2010

By marrying nanotechnologies and microbiology, researchers from UCL succeeded for the first time in observing the molecular organization of the cell wall of alive bacteria.
A major stake in microbiology research is to better understand how the elementary bricks of the bacterial cell wall get assembled and organized.

The answer to this question allows envisaging new applications in the medical sector, in particular for new antibiotics development.

Thanks to the marriage between microbial genetics and nanotechnologies, teams of Pr.s Pascal Hols (Institute of life sciences - ISV) and Yves Dufrêne (Institute of Condensed Matter and Nanosciences IMCN and ISV), in association with the INRA (The scientific Institute of Agronomic Research - France), succeeded in making images of the peptidoglycane molecular organization, the major constituent of the bacterial cell wall.

This discovery, done within the framework of an ARC (Combined Research Action) and published in the Nature Communications review, shows that peptidoglycane molecules get assembled to form nanocables rolled up on the cell surface.

Considering that the peptidoglycane is the target of numerous antibiotics, this study should allow to better understand the mode of action of these drugs, even to test new more effective molecules.

Source:  UCL