Targeting antibiotic resistance

If you ask Vijay Parashar, associate professor of medical and molecular sciences (MMSC) at the University of Delaware College of Health Sciences, human bodies are bags of bacteria.

"It sounds gross, but not all bacteria are bad; most of them are good. The trouble starts when the bad bacteria learn how to outsmart antibiotics."

The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has become one of the world's greatest public health threats. The World Health Organization projects that antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" could kill 10 million people a year by 2050, surpassing the annual number of deaths from all cancers combined.

To stay ahead of these superbugs, scientists must understand exactly how bacteria survive an antibiotic attack.

In new research recently published in the journal Structure, Parashar's team has uncovered a critical molecular switch that helps bacteria survive environmental stress and antibiotic exposure.

The paper is among the first peer-reviewed cryo-EM structure papers led by a UD principal investigator, with the imaging analysis, model building and biological interpretation done entirely in Parashar's lab on UD's campus.

"This research has broken boundaries," Parashar said. "For years, UD researchers who wanted to do this kind of work had to ship samples to partners in Pittsburgh and Penn State," Parashar said.

The study's UD coauthors include Mona Batish, associate professor of MMSC, and Leif Boddie, a recent medical diagnostics graduate. Data for the study were collected at the Department of Energy's Laboratory for BioMolecular Structure at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a national user facility, with imaging analysis completed at UD.