Thaindian News

Washington, Nov 1 (IANS) A vampire-like bug that preys on specific bacteria, including certain human pathogens, could potentially act as a living antibiotic for a range of infections.

The bacterium, Micavibrio aeruginosavorus, was discovered to inhabit wastewater nearly 30 years ago, but is difficult to culture and examine with traditional microbiology techniques.

However, Martin Wu and graduate student Zhang Wang, biologists at the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, have decoded its genome and are learning “how it makes its living”.

The bacterium first seeks out prey, certain other bacteria, and then attaches itself to its victim’s cell wall and essentially sucks out nutrients, the journal BMC Genomics.

Unlike most other bugs, which draw nutrients from their surroundings, M. aeruginosavorus can survive and propagate only by drawing its nutrition from specific prey bacteria.

This kills the prey - making it a potentially powerful agent for destroying pathogens. One bacterium it targets is P aeruginosavorus, which is a chief cause of serious lung infections in cystic fibrosis patients, according to a university statement.

“Pathologists may eventually be able to use this bacterium to fight fire with fire, so to speak, as a bacterium that will aggressively hunt for and attack certain other bacteria that are extremely harmful to humans,” Wu said.

“We used cutting-edge genomic technology in our lab to decode this bacterium’s genome,” he said.

“We are particularly interested in the molecular mechanisms that allow it to hunt for and attack prey. This kind of investigation would have been extremely difficult and expensive to do only a few years ago,” he concluded.