Medical scientists find a unique way to trick deadly bacterias into committing suicide

in #science6 years ago


Bacterias require nutrients to survive so they secrete specialized iron-harvesting molecules into the environment which, upon binding an iron ion, are recaptured and actively transported back into the bacteria. Scientists have now developed a method to hijack this process so that an iron-harvesting molecule can be turned into a Trojan horse. What the scientists have done is that they have stuck two antibiotics onto the iron-harvesting molecules so that when the unsuspecting bacterias gobble them up, they get a dose of antibiotic. 


Now, there are two types of bacteria: gram-positive and gram-negative. Gram-positive bacteria have just a single membrane so they are killed by the first of the two antibiotics, which is anyway meant for gram-positive bacterias only. Gram-negative bacteria, on the other hand, have two membranes with an enzyme between the two membranes. 


Now this enzyme is what these gram-negative bacterias use to render antibiotics useless and so to effectively neutralize a gram-negative bacteria, this enzyme must be neutralized because only after doing so can an antibiotic get past the second membrane. This is where the second antibiotic present in the hijacked iron-harvesting molecule comes to play. When a gram-negative bacteria gobbles up the molecule, the enzyme destroys the first antibiotic but unwittingly unleashes the second antibiotic in the process, against which it has no defence and thus the bacteria ends up getting neutralized.

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