A
University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher and his collaborators at the
University of California, San Francisco have repurposed the gene-editing tool
CRISPR to study which genes are targeted by particular antibiotics, providing
clues on how to improve existing antibiotics or develop new ones.
Resistance
to current antibiotics by disease-causing pathogens is a growing problem, one
estimated to endanger millions of lives and cost over $2 billion each year in
the U.S.
Using
a form of bacterial sex, the researchers transferred
Mobile-CRISPRi from common laboratory strains into diverse bacteria, even
including a little-studied microbe making its home on cheese rinds. This ease
of transfer makes the technique a boon for scientists studying any number of
bacteria that cause disease or promote health.
To
make CRISPRi mobile, the researchers developed methods to transfer the system
from common lab models like E. coli to disease-causing species, which are often
harder to study. Peters' team turned to one of the natural ways bacteria link
up and exchange DNA, a kind of bacterial sex called conjugation.
See:
Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle, Pharmaceutical Microbiology
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Pharmaceutical Microbiology