Loading video.
VIDEO: When Salmonella (red) invades a cell, APOL3 (green) gloms on to the bacterium s surface and breaks it apart. view more
Credit: R. Gaudet et al./Science 2021
Cells, like many of us, fend off germs with cleaning products.
Researchers have discovered that a molecule made throughout much of the body wipes out invading bacteria like a detergent attacking an oily stain.
This killer cleaner, a protein known as APOL3, thwarts infections by dissolving bacterial membranes, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator John MacMicking and his colleagues report in the journal
Science on July 15, 2021. His team tested the protein on the food-poisoning bacteria