Model of the mechanism. Credit: Marc Prudhomme
When confronted with an antibiotic, toxic substance, or other source of considerable stress, bacteria are able to activate a defense mechanism using cell-to-cell communication to “warn” unaffected bacteria, which can then anticipate, shield themselves and spread the warning signal.
This mechanism has just been described for the first time by a team of scientists from CNRS and Université de Toulouse III–Paul Sabatier. It paves the way for the development of new, more effective antibiotic treatments that can target this bacterial communication system.
The work appears in Nature Communications.
When they perceive a source of stress, bacteria spring into action, inducing changes in the expression of certain genes and their physiological properties to make them less vulnerable to the detected lethal substance. They also produce small alarmone proteins on their surface in order to contact and activate random neighboring bacteria.
Unstressed bacteria can only change state in the presence of a sufficient amount of alarmones. Thus, only a source of stress perceived by sufficient bacteria can trigger propagation of this activation.
The mechanism offers several advantages: It limits the unnecessary use of energy and enables a rapid and coordinated response in the population. Because activation is gradual, it creates diversity in the population over time, thus increasing the bacteria’s chances of survival.
These findings were established using a dozen different families of antibiotics on populations of Streptococcus pneumoniae, the bacteria that causes pneumococcal infections.
More information:
Pneumococcal competence is a populational health sensor driving multilevel heterogeneity in response to antibiotics, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49853-2
Citation:
Team discovers a new defense mechanism in bacteria (2024, July 10)
retrieved 10 July 2024
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