Cryo-electron Microscopy Reveals Atomic Structure of Bacteriophage miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Credit: UAB
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Six years ago, Michael Niederweis, Ph.D., described the first toxin ever found for the deadly pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This toxin, tuberculosis necrotizing toxin, or TNT, became the founding member of a novel class of previously unrecognized toxins present in more than 600 bacterial and fungal species, as determined by protein sequence similarity. The toxin is released as M. tuberculosis bacteria survive and grow inside their human macrophage host, killing the macrophage and allowing the escape and spread of the bacteria.
For 132 years, the lack of an identified toxin in M. tuberculosis had contrasted with nearly all other pathogenic bacteria whose toxins contribute to illness or death. M. tuberculosis infects 9 million people a year and kills more than 1 million.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded $2.5 million in grants to 12 institutes around the world to support research on bacteriophage therapy. These awards represent NIAID’s first series of grants focused exclusively on research on this therapy, an emerging field that could yield new ways to fight antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. A 2019 report from CDC found that antibiotic-resistant pathogens cause more than 2.8 million infections in the U.S. each year and more than 35,000 people die.
A computer-generated rendition of a bacteriophage.
Image/NIAID
Bacteriophages (or “phages”) are viruses that can kill or incapacitate specific kinds of bacteria while leaving other bacteria and human cells unharmed. By gathering naturally-occurring phages, or by modifying or engineering phages to display certain properties, researchers hope to create novel anti-bacterial therapeutics. Because phages eliminate ba
NIAID awards $2 5 million in grants to support research on bacteriophage therapy news-medical.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from news-medical.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded $2.5 million in grants to 12.