 |
| Escherichia coli bacteria |
Long
before bacteria had to contend with antibiotic drugs, they had to survive
extreme temperatures as Earth warmed and cooled over millennia. Could the
adaptations they evolved to temperature -- especially heat -- help explain why
certain strains are resistant to certain drugs? A new study by a research team
at the University of California-Los Angeles that includes Santa Fe Institute
External Professor Pamela Yeh suggests that defenses against extreme
temperatures, do, indeed, give E. coli bacteria an advantage in fending off
certain drugs.
"Our
code name for this paper was 'temperature as drugs.' Because we found that
different temperatures had to act as a stressor just as a drug acts as a
stressor to a bacterial population," says Yeh. "So it came from a real
basic question: Do drugs affect bacteria in some of the same ways that
temperature affects bacteria?"
It
turns out that the same mechanisms E. coli evolved to deal with
temperature endowed it with a built-in defense against drugs. But this
advantage only goes so far: while heat-tolerant bacteria may be better able to
resist drugs that stress bacteria in the same way high temperatures do, that
also makes them more sensitive to drugs that mimic the effect of cold.
The
work could help doctors administer antibiotics in a more precise way.
"I
think it's an interesting first step, because if we think about how we treat a
patient with an infection, depending on where it is, your body has different
temperatures at different locations," says Tina Manzhu Kang, a first
co-author of the study. "We found some antibiotics work better with lower
temperatures. So that's something you might want to consider when deciding on a
treatment."
The
team is now looking at how other stressors may have affected E. coli.
"There have been a number of stressors that have been there since the
beginning of life, such as pressure, and we think the bacteria may have also
built up resistance to those," says Mauricio Cruz-Loya, the paper's other
first co-author.
See:
Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle, Pharmaceutical Microbiology
