Tag: Bacteria

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New Technology May Help Reduce Serious and Costly Post-Surgical Infections—Using Nothing but Air

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According to a recent estimate, implant infections following hip and knee replacement surgeries in the U.S. may number 65,000 by 2020, with the associated healthcare costs exceeding $1 billion. A new small, high-tech device could have a significant impact on improving health outcomes and reducing cost for these types of surgeries. The device, Air Barrier System (ABS), attaches on top of the surgical drape and gently emits HEPA-filtered air over the incision site. By creating a “cocoon” of clean air, the device prevents airborne particles—including the bacteria that can cause healthcare-associated infections—from entering the wound.

Air Barrier System
The Air Barrier System creates a “cocoon” of clean air (gray area with size indicated) over a surgical site to remove airborne contaminants and reduce the risk of infection in patients who are receiving an artificial hip, a blood vessel graft, a titanium plate in the spine or other implants.

Scientists recently analyzed the effectiveness of the ABS device in a clinical study—funded by NIGMS—involving nearly 300 patients. Each patient needed an implant, such as an artificial hip, a blood vessel graft in the leg or a titanium plate in the spine. Because implant operations involve inserting foreign materials permanently into the body, they present an even higher risk of infection than many other surgeries, and implant infections can cause life-long problems.

The researchers focused on one of the most common causes of implant infections—the air in the operating room. Although operating rooms are much cleaner than almost any other non-hospital setting, it’s nearly impossible to sterilize the entire room. Instead, the scientists focused on reducing contaminants directly over the surgical site. They theorized that if the air around the wound was cleaner, the number of implant infections might go down. Continue reading “New Technology May Help Reduce Serious and Costly Post-Surgical Infections—Using Nothing but Air”

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Bit by the Research Bug: Priscilla’s Growth as a Scientist

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This is the third post in a new series highlighting NIGMS’ efforts toward developing a robust, diverse and well-trained scientific workforce.

Priscilla Del Valle
Credit: Christa Reynolds.
Priscilla Del Valle
Academic Institution: The University of Texas at El Paso
Major: Microbiology
Minors: Sociology and Biomedical Engineering
Mentor: Charles Spencer
Favorite Book: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
Favorite Food: Tacos
Favorite music: Pop
Hobbies: Reading and drinking coffee

It’s not every day that you’ll hear someone say, “I learned more about parasites, and I thought, ‘This is so cool!’” But it’s also not every day that you’ll meet an undergraduate researcher like 21-year-old Priscilla Del Valle.

BUILD and the Diversity Program Consortium

The Diversity Program Consortium (DPC) aims to enhance diversity in the biomedical research workforce through improved recruitment, training and mentoring nationwide. It comprises three integrated programs—Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD), which implements activities at student, faculty and institutional levels; the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN), which provides mentoring and career development opportunities for scientists at all levels; and the Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC), which is responsible for evaluating and coordinating DPC activities.

Ten undergraduate institutions across the United States have received BUILD grants, and together, they serve a diverse population. Each BUILD site has developed a unique program intended to engage and prepare students for success in the biomedical sciences and maximize opportunities for research training and faculty development. BUILD programs include everything from curricular redesign, lab renovations, faculty training and research grants, to student career development, mentoring and research-intensive summer programs.

Del Valle’s interest in studying infectious diseases and parasites is motivating her to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. focusing on immunology and pathogenic microorganisms. Currently, Del Valle is a junior at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP)’s BUILDing SCHOLARS Center. BUILDing SCHOLARS, which stands for “Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity Southwest Consortium of Health-Oriented Education Leaders and Research Scholars,” focuses on providing undergraduate students interested in the biomedical sciences with academic, financial and professional development opportunities. Del Valle is one of the first cohort of students selected to take part in this training opportunity.

BUILD scholars receive individual support through this training model, and Del Valle says she likes “the way that they [BUILDing SCHOLARS] take care of us and the workshops and opportunities that we have.”

Born in El Paso, Texas, Del Valle moved to Saltillo, Mexico, where she spent most of her childhood. Shortly after graduating from high school, she returned to El Paso to start undergraduate courses at El Paso Community College (EPCC), to pursue an M.D. Del Valle explains that in Mexico, unlike in the United States, careers in medical research are not really emphasized in the student community or in society, so she did not have firsthand experience with research.

Del Valle discovered her passion for research when she was assigned a project on malaria as part of an EPCC course. She was fascinated by the parasite that causes malaria. “It impressed me how something so little could infect a person so harshly,” she says. Continue reading “Bit by the Research Bug: Priscilla’s Growth as a Scientist”

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Cool Image: Inside a Biofilm Build-up

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A growing Vibrio cholerae biofilm.

A growing Vibrio cholerae biofilm. Each slightly curved comma shape represents an individual bacterium from assembled confocal microscopy images. Different colors show each bacterium’s position in the biofilm in relation to the surface on which the film is growing. Credit: Jing Yan, Ph.D., and Bonnie Bassler, Ph.D., Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.

Bacteria use many methods to overcome threats in their environment. One of these ways is forming colonies called biofilms on surfaces of objects. Often appearing like the bubble-shaped fortress represented in this image, biofilms enable bacteria to withstand attacks, compete for space and survive fluctuations in nutrient supply. Bacteria aggregated within biofilms inside our bodies, for example, resist antibiotic therapy more effectively than free swimming cells, making infections difficult to treat. On the other hand, biofilms are also useful for making microbial fuel cells and for waste-water treatment. Learning how biofilms work, therefore, could provide essential tools in our ongoing battle against disease-causing agents and in our efforts to harness beneficial bacterial behaviors. Researchers are now using new imaging techniques to watch how biofilms grow, cell by cell, and to identify more effective ways of disrupting or fostering them.

Until now, poor imaging resolution meant that scientists could not see what individual bacteria in the films are up to as the biofilms grow. The issue is that bacteria are tiny, making imaging each cell, as well as the ability to distinguish each cell in the biofilm community, problematic. Continue reading “Cool Image: Inside a Biofilm Build-up”

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The Irresistible Resistome: How Infant Diapers Might Help Combat Antibiotic Resistance (sort of)

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Gautam Dantas
Credit: Pablo Tsukayama, Ph.D.,
Washington University School of Medicine
Gautam Dantas
Born: Mumbai, India
Most proud of: His family, which brings him joy and pride
Favorite lab tradition: OOFF! Official Optional Formal Fridays, when members of his lab can dress up, eat bread—made in the lab’s own bread machine—and drink beer and wine together at the end of the day
When not in the lab, he: Enjoys home brewing, pickling and canning, and spending time with his wife and children. He also attends musical performances, including those of his wife, who sings in the St. Louis Symphony Chorus
Advice to aspiring scientists: Pursue hobbies, take risks, explore beyond your comfort zone. “You can do a Ph.D., but also have other experiences.” He says his own outside activities refine his focus in the lab, keep him grounded and help him be an empathetic mentor to his students. Plus, he met his wife while singing in the chorus of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

When I Grow Up…

Gautam Dantas remembers the day in 10th grade when he first wanted to be a scientist. It was the day he had a new biology teacher, a visiting researcher from the U.S. The teacher passionately described his own biochemical studies of how organisms live together in communities. By the end of the class, Dantas had resolved to earn a Ph.D. in biochemistry.

He ended up doing much more—gaining expertise in computational biology, protein design and synthetic biology. He now combines his skills and knowledge in multifaceted research that spans four departments at Washington University in St. Louis. His goal: to better understand and help combat a vital public health threat—drug-resistant bacteria.

“Our motivation is that we are living in the antibiotic era, and antibiotic resistance is getting out of control,” Dantas says. “We have very few new antibiotics we can use, so we’re kind of scrambling [to find new ways to treat bacterial diseases].”

His research focuses on one of the groups most vulnerable to bacterial infections—newborn babies.

According to his lab’s website Exit icon, the research is “at the interface of microbial genomics, ecology, synthetic biology, and systems biology,” and it aims “to understand, harness, and engineer the biochemical processing potential of microbial communities.” They do it by scrounging around in infant diapers.

Antibiotic Angst

Since their introduction in the 1940s, antibiotic drugs have saved countless lives. Simultaneously, they weeded out strains of bacteria easily killed by the drugs, allowing drug-resistant strains to thrive. Every year, at least 2 million people in the U.S. become infected and at least 23,000 die from drug-resistant bacteria, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Continue reading “The Irresistible Resistome: How Infant Diapers Might Help Combat Antibiotic Resistance (sort of)”

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Newly Identified Cell Wall Construction Workers: A Novel Antibiotic Target?

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SEDS

A family of proteins abbreviated SEDS (bright, pink) help build bacterial cell walls, so they are a potential target for new antibiotic drugs. Credit: Rudner lab, Harvard Medical School.

Scientists have identified a new family of proteins that, like the targets of penicillin, help bacteria build their cell walls. The finding might reveal a new strategy for treating a range of bacterial diseases.

The protein family is nicknamed SEDS, because its members help control the shape, elongation, division and spore formation of bacterial cells. Now researchers have proof that SEDS proteins also play a role in constructing cell walls. This image shows the movement of a molecular machine that contains a SEDS protein as it constructs hoops of bacterial cell wall material.

Any molecule involved in building or maintaining cell walls is of immediate interest as a possible target for antibiotic drugs. That’s because animals, including humans, don’t have cell walls—we have cell membranes instead. So disabling cell walls, which bacteria need to survive, is a good way to kill bacteria without harming patients.

This strategy has worked for the first antibiotic drug, penicillin (and its many derivatives), for some 75 years. Now, many strains of bacteria have evolved to resist penicillins—and other antibiotics—making the drugs less effective.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug-resistant strains of bacteria Exit icon infect at least 2 million people, killing more than 20,000 of them in the U.S. every year. Identifying potential new drug targets, like SEDS proteins, is part of a multi-faceted approach to combating drug-resistant bacteria.

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CRISPR Serves Up More than DNA

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Marine bacterium Marinomonas mediterranea
The marine bacterium Marinomonas mediterranea uses a CRISPR system to spot invading RNAs and store a memory of the invasion event in its genome. Research team member Antonio Sanchez-Amat was the first to isolate and characterize this bacterial species. Credit: Antonio Sanchez-Amat, University of Murcia.

A new study has added another twist to the CRISPR story. As we’ve highlighted in several recent posts, CRISPR is an immune system in bacteria that recognizes and destroys viral DNA and other invading DNA elements, such as transposons. Scientists have adapted CRISPR into an indispensable gene-editing tool now widely used in both basic and applied research.

Many previously described CRISPR systems detect and cut viral DNA, insert the DNA pieces into the bacterial genome and then use them as molecular “mug shots” to flag and destroy the virus if it attacks again. But various viruses use RNA, not DNA, as genetic material. Although research has shown that some CRISPR systems also can target RNA, how these systems can archive harmful RNA encounters in the bacterial genome was unknown. Continue reading “CRISPR Serves Up More than DNA”

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Cool Video: Watching Bacteria Turn Virulent

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Researchers created an apparatus to study quorum sensing, a communication system that allows some bacteria to cause dangerous infections. Their findings suggest that blocking bacterial communication might lead to a new way to combat such infections. Credit: Minyoung Kevin Kim and Bonnie Bassler, Princeton University.

If you’ve ever felt a slimy coating on your teeth, scrubbed grime from around a sink drain or noticed something growing between the tiles of a shower, you’ve encountered a biofilm. Made up of communities of bacteria and other microorganisms, biofilms thrive where they can remain moist and relatively undisturbed. As they enlarge, biofilms can block narrow passages like medical stents, airways, pipes or intestines. Continue reading “Cool Video: Watching Bacteria Turn Virulent”

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Finding Adventure: Blake Wiedenheft’s Path to Gene Editing

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Blake Wiedenheft
Blake Wiedenheft
Grew up in: Fort Peck, Montana
Fields: Microbiology, biochemistry, structural biology
Job site: Montana State University
Secret talent: Being a generalist; enjoying many different subjects and activities
When not in the lab, he’s: Running, biking, skiing or playing scrabble with his grandmother

Scientific discoveries are often stories of adventure. This is the realization that set Blake Wiedenheft on a path toward one of the hottest areas in biology.

His story begins in Montana, where he grew up and now lives. Always exploring different interests, Wiedenheft decided in his final semester at Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman to volunteer for Mark Young, a scientist who studies plant viruses. Even though he majored in biology, Wiedenheft had spent little time in a lab and hadn’t even considered research as a career option. Continue reading “Finding Adventure: Blake Wiedenheft’s Path to Gene Editing”

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Bacterial Biofilms: A Charged Environment

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Bacillus subtilis biofilm
A Bacillus subtilis biofilm grown in a Petri dish. Credit: Süel Lab, UCSD.

Last summer, we shared findings from Gürol Süel Exit icon and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, that bacterial cells in tight-knit microbial communities called biofilms expand in a stop-and-go pattern. The researchers concluded that this pattern helps make food at the nutrient-rich margin available to the cells in the starved center, but they didn’t know how. They’ve now shown that the cells use electrochemical signaling to communicate and cooperate with each other.

Because nutrients and other signals cells use to sense each other and their environment move rather slowly, the researchers looked for a faster, more active communication system in biofilms of the bacterium B. subtilis. They focused on electrical signaling via potassium, a positively charged ion that, for example, our nerve and muscle cells use to send or receive signals. Continue reading “Bacterial Biofilms: A Charged Environment”

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Cool Images: A Halloween-Inspired Cell Collection

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As Halloween approaches, we turned up some spectral images from our gallery. The collection below highlights some spooky-sounding—but really important—biological topics that researchers are actively investigating to spur advances in medicine.

Cell Skeleton
Fibroblast
The cell skeleton, or cytoskeleton, is the framework that gives a cell its shape, helps it move and keeps its contents organized for proper function. A cell that lacks a cytoskeleton becomes misshapen and immobile. This fibroblast, a cell that normally makes connective tissues and travels to the site of a wound to help it heal, is lacking a cytoskeleton. Researchers have associated faulty cytoskeletons and resulting abnormal cell movement with birth defects and weakened immune system functioning. See fibroblasts with healthy skeletons.

Continue reading “Cool Images: A Halloween-Inspired Cell Collection”