Bacteria enzyme could end one of the top global health threats

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Scientists are to spend two years researching whether an enzyme in MRSA bacteria from the 1950s could put an end to antibiotic resistance.

Dr Jo Hobbs, from St Andrews University’s school of biology, and her team are hopeful that they can find the secret to avoiding or reversing the bug’s resistance to drugs.

The World Health Organisation has identified resistance to antibiotics as one of the top global threats to health, causing around five million deaths every year.

Dr Hobbs, who is a molecular microbiologist, said: “Antibiotic resistance gets a lot of attention, but tolerance is an underappreciated problem that must be tackled.

“In the past 10 years, it’s become clear that bacteria become tolerant first, surviving longer in the presence of antibiotics.

“This can lead to recurring infections and the bacteria can then become resistant to treatment.

“Tolerance is already a widespread phenomenon: it has been detected in more than 20 bacterial species, including streptococci, which cause pneumonia and strep throat, and Staphylococcus aureus, which is the SA part of MRSA.”

Dr Hobbs and her team want to understand how tolerance develops at the molecular level.

They are investigating a bacterial enzyme called Prs, which changes over time to confer tolerance.

They found the mutated enzyme by examining one of the first samples of MRSA taken in the 1950s.

Dr Hobbs said: “There are lots of different strains of MRSA, but we investigated this one from the 1950s because it’s very slow to grow in the lab compared to other strains.

“This was a good clue, as the bacteria that exhibit antibiotic tolerance are often a bit slow. Growing slowly is one way that they get around antibiotics.

“We isolated a special version of Prs from this ancient MRSA and over the next two years, we’ll be studying how its molecular structure has changed, and how this affects the response of bacteria to antibiotics.

“We’ll also find out the impact of tolerance caused by Prs on different antibiotic treatments.”

She added: “We need antibiotics to be effective, or we’ll return to a time when simple, common infections are deadly.

“Antibiotic tolerance can lead to recurring serious infections – it’s vital we understand and tackle its underlying mechanisms.”