Washington, Jan 4 - By manipulating how bacteria chat up one another, scientists could get rid of infections bedevilling the human flesh, reveals a study.
Texas A&M University researchers have achieved an unprecedented degree of control over the formation and dispersal of biofilms, with potentially significant health and industrial applications.
A community of bugs living together, a biofilm is a protective and adhesive slime that exhibits increased resistance to outside threats such as antibiotics.
The finding is a significant one, said Thomas K. Wood, professor of chemical engineering at Texas, because biofilms are notoriously difficult to break apart, the journal Nature Communications reported.
The film can grow on a variety of living and nonliving surfaces, including submerged rocks, food, teeth (as plaque) and biomedical implants such as knee and hip replacements.
Working with E. coli bug, Wood and colleague Arul Jayaraman have employed specific signals sent and received between bugs to trigger biofilm dispersal, according to a university statement.
While biofilm can pose serious health risks, its use in industrial applications such as in bioreactors is offering hope for an alternative-fuels future, Wood said.
Genetically tweaked and grown in these reactors, biofilm can be used to produce a variety of chemicals such as propanol and butanol. And because the bacteria within biofilm feed on glucose, bioreactors using biofilms have the potential to help transform the economy.
These reactors also benefit from the robust nature of biofilm, a trait that makes the film ideal for use, said Wood.
"We want to eventually make with bacteria all the things we currently make in chemical refineries," he said.
"Never before has a group discovered proteins that make biofilms disperse and then used them in a synthetic circuit, we took advantage of the fact that cells talk to each other," said Wood.
By genetically inserting a foreign chemical signal from another bacterium - Pseudomonas aeruginosa - into E. coli, the research team was able to force one group of E. coli to continuously emit this chemical signal.
The researchers then inserted this group of bacteria into an environment where a biofilm was present. The existing biofilm was also genetically modified to receive the chemical signal.
Once the signal was received, the bacteria within the biofilm responded by breaking apart and leaving the environment, effectively dispersing the biofilm, explained Wood.(IANS)
