Bad bacteria could soon have no place left to hide, thanks to new materials that turn the cell’s own defences against them.
Scientists at The University of Nottingham and GSK Consumer Healthcare have developed a technique that could locate the potential source of an infection by hijacking the normal processes of pathogens, thus revealing their location.
And by using fluorescent markers to tag these cells, they have even been able to detect them by using a simple mobile phone camera.
The breakthrough, published in the journal Nature Materials, could offer an easier way of detecting pathogenic bacteria outside of a clinical setting and could be particularly important for the developing world, where access to more sophisticated laboratory techniques is often limited. The research was led by Professor Cameron Alexander, Head of the Division of Drug Delivery and Tissue Engineering and EPSRC Leadership Fellow in the University’s School of Pharmacy, building on work by PhD student Peter Magennis. Professor Alexander said: “Essentially, we have hijacked some of the metabolic machinery which bacteria use to control their environment, and used it instead to grow polymers which bind strongly to the specific bacteria that produce them. “The neat thing about this is that the functionality of the polymers grown on the surface of the bacteria is programmed by the cells so that they can recognise their own ’kind’. We used fluorescent labels to light up the polymers and were able to capture this labelling using a mobile phone camera, so in principle it could be possible to use these materials as point-of-care diagnostics for pathogenic bacteria.” The study has shown that the bacteria helped to synthesise polymers on their own surfaces which not only were different from those made by conventional methods, but which retained a form of ‘structural memory’ of that surface. This means in future it should be possible to make specific detection agents or additives for topical anti-infectives that target a number of harmful bacteria all by a common route.
The study was funded by a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) GSK Consumer Healthcare CASE studentship, and Professor Alexander’s Engineering and Physical Research Council (EPSRC) Leadership Fellowship. The paper will be accessible on the Nature Materials website at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmat3949
