Discovery of controlled swarm in bacteria
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - 14:01
in Health & Medicine
A study led by Spanish researchers from Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) describes one of the mechanisms in which pathogenic bacteria populations control the way they spread over the surface of the organs they infect and stop when they detect the presence of an antibiotic, only to resume again when the effect wears off. The star of this process is the RecA protein, which significantly increases its concentration at the start of the bacteria DNA repair mechanism induced by antibiotics. The research was published in Infection and Immunity.