’Office life’ of bacteria may be their weak spot

A research team in the University’s Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology has identified for the first time how the “paper shredder” that keeps the bacteria E. coli on top of its day job works. Now the group are looking for ways to jam the mechanism and leave E. coli and similar bacteria in filing hell. Dr Kenneth McDowall, Associate Professor in Molecular Microbiology, who led the research, said: “If we block the ‘shredder’ using genetics in the lab, the bacteria drown in a flood of messages. The challenge now is to block it with drugs so that bacterial infections in humans can be killed. Our latest results give us a good idea how this can be done. “Bacteria are constantly firing off instructions telling the molecular factories inside them what to do, and where and when to do it. It is absolutely critical in this situation, not only for the factories to act on those instructions, but to destroy them once they have been completed.