Cystic Fibrosis Treatment Gets A New Approach In The Evolutionary Roots Of Ancient Bacteria
Tuesday, December 16, 2008 - 15:49
in Health & Medicine
The redox-active pigments responsible for the blue-green stain of the mucus that clogs the lungs of children and adults with cystic fibrosis (CF) are primarily signaling molecules that allow large clusters of the opportunistic infection agent, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, to organize themselves into structured communities, report Massachusetts Institute of Technology geobiologists at American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) 48th Annual Meeting, Dec. 13-17, 2008 in San Francisco. For decades, these pigments, called phenazines, have been wrongly regarded as antibiotics, generated by P. aeruginosa, to kill off the microbe's bacterial competitors in the lungs. read more
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