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MU researcher Lesa Beamer
is studying ways to make antibiotics work better.
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Researchers
Fight
Antibiotic Resistance
By
Jeremy Diener
According to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, antibiotic resistance,
or the ability of bacteria to resist drugs, has been called one
of the world’s most pressing health problems. Many research
projects are developing methods to combat antibiotic resistance.
A pair of research teams at the University of Missouri-Columbia
is studying a resistant bacterium that can be particularly harmful
or deadly to people with weakened immune systems.
MU researchers Lesa Beamer, associate professor
of biochemistry,
and Peter Tipton, professor of biochemistry, are targeting Pseudomonas
aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa), a common bacterium that can be found
in soil, water or even on a restaurant’s salad bar, and
has become resistant to antibiotics. Healthy humans typically
don’t have a problem with P. aeruginosa, but it does affect
patients suffering from cystic fibrosis, burn victims and patients
undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer, among others.
“Some bacteria contain enzymes that
create a coating around the bacteria to prevent antibiotics from
getting in to do their jobs,” Beamer said. “The idea
behind this project was to see if we could manipulate that coating
to allow the antibiotic access to the bacteria.”
To accomplish this, the labs headed by Beamer
and Tipton are working with a particular set of enzymes, or proteins,
in the bacteria to design an inhibitor, or small molecules that
block these enzymes.
In order to stop enzymes from creating the
protective coating, it is necessary to understand them in detail,
Beamer said. Tipton studies the mechanics of how the enzymes work.
Beamer is looking at the three dimensional structure of the enzymes
and specializes in a procedure known as x-ray crystallography.
This technique serves as a powerful substitute for a microscope,
but allows Beamer to see things that are too small for the most
powerful microscope. It offers her a 3-D view of the enzyme, helping
her determine what portions of the enzyme are important and how
they are arranged. Enzymes have a very specific job in a cell,
and they have specific structures to do that job, she said.
Beamer and Tipton’s research is ongoing,
but Beamer said breakthroughs in developing structural descriptions
of the enzymes have helped the researchers understand how the
enzymes work and how the three-dimensional structure contributes
to their function, which she hopes will lead to more effective
antibiotics.
“There are quite a few bacteria
that you could kill very easily 50 years ago with antibiotics
that you either can’t kill today, or they are harder to
kill,” Beamer said. “We want to find a way to make
current antibiotics work better.”
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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