Question: which type of medicine are you going to use to stop bacteria communication?

Katie Fala answered on 11 Nov 2019:

Thanks for your question!

I am studying lots of different types of bacteria found in different microbiomes (microbial ecosystems where lots of different bacteria, fungi, yeasts and more live together in fairly stable communities) and looking for a new medicine that is produced by some of them.

The reason for this is that we know that bacteria communicate with one another in multispecies ecosystems and we hypothesise that other bacteria in these communities have evolved ways to outcompete their neighbours and may produce substances to interrupt their competitors communications, thereby giving themselves an advantage.

We aren’t sure exactly what form these new drugs may take – they could be an enzyme that ‘eats’ (cleaves) the signalling molecules, or they could be molecules that block the receptors on the surface of the bacteria that stop them from detecting signalling molecules, or could stop the bacterial communication in some other way. We have found many promising bacteria that seem to interrupt bacterial communications, so the next plans are to identify these ‘good’ bacteria, characterise what substances they are producing and see if it could be used as a new type of antimicrobial treatment, possibly in combination with other antibiotics.