Amazing stuff! Good news!
"Viruses that infect bacteria, called phages, evolve different strategies to infect their targets on the International Space Station than they do on the ground, which could help create new treatments for antibiotic-resistant infections.
Researchers found that the phages took longer to infect E.coli in microgravity, and that the viruses developed microgravity-specific mutations, some of which helped them to better cling onto bacterial receptors.
Once they returned to earth, they were able to kill stubborn strains of E.coli responsible for urinary tract infections that tend to be resistant to bacteriophages."
"... Once the viruses adapted to microgravity by subtly shape-shifting, though, they became even more effective bacteria killers. “A simple microgravity experiment exposes these mutations that have much higher efficacy against pathogens,” ..."
From the abstract:
"Bacteriophage–host interactions play a fundamental role in shaping microbial ecosystems. While extensively studied on Earth, their behavior in microgravity remains largely unexplored.
Here, we report the dynamics between T7 bacteriophage and Escherichia coli in microgravity aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Phage activity was initially delayed in microgravity but ultimately successful.
We identified de novo mutations in both phage and bacteria that enhanced fitness in microgravity. Deep mutational scanning of the phage receptor binding domain revealed striking differences in the number, position, and mutational preferences between terrestrial and microgravity conditions, reflecting underlying differences in bacterial adaptation. Combinatorial libraries informed by microgravity selections yielded T7 variants capable of productively infecting uropathogenic E. coli resistant to wild-type T7 under terrestrial conditions. These findings help lay the foundation for future research on the impact of microgravity on phage–host interactions and microbial communities and the terrestrial benefits of this research."
Spaceflight supercharges viruses’ ability to infect bacteria "Viruses develop tricks to attack bacteria without the help of gravity"
Fig 1. Experimental design to evaluate microgravity interactions on the ISS.
No comments:
Post a Comment