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COLLEGE STATION, Texas
Part of a small virus that at
tacks only bacteria acts like an
antibiotic to destroy E. coli, re
searchers with the Texas Agri
cultural Experiment Station
have found.
A report on the antibiotic
action of the small virus, “Q
Beta,” is reported in this week’s
Science magazine.
The research was funded by
the National Institute of
Health’s general medicine insti
tute.
The finding provides a new
approach for designing drugs to
combat many serious bacterial
diseases, including E. coli, pneu
monia, staph infection, ear in
fections, Lyme’s disease and
cholera in humans, as well as
bacterial diseases in pets, live
stock and crops, according to
Tom Bernhardt, biochemistry
doctoral student, and Dr. Ing-
Nang Wang, a lead investigator
on the project.
Virus Found To Carry Antibiotic Against E. Coli
New types of antibiotics are
increasingly important because
many disease-causing bacteria
have become resistant to antibi
otics, reducing the number of
medicines available for treat
ment. Researchers fear that con
tinued resistance could result in
epidemics of diseases once
thought controlled by antibiot
ics.
The research at the Experi
ment Station found that a pro
tein within the small virus,
known as a “phage” in scientific
circles, does the same thing to
bacterial cell walls as antibiotics.
It blocks the ability of the cell to
make its tough outer wall so bac
teria blow up or destroy them
selves rather than divide into
more cells. Dead bacterial cells
means an end to the illness.
“This ’protein antibiotic’ is
the answer to an old mystery:
how Q-beta and other small
phage kill bacteria,” said Dr. Ry
Young, a biochemist in whose
Oats
lab at Texas A&M University
the work was done, in collabora
tion with Dr. Douglas K. Struck,
a medical biochemistry and
genetics professor. ‘Basically
they let the cell commit suicide
by dividing without making a
new cell wall.” The research
team expects pharmaceutical
companies to further explore
phages for new types of antibiot
ics.
“Ideally, the small bit of pro
tein responsible could be mim
icked by a pharmaceutical
company,” said Struck, “and a
drug could be made to be gen
eral against many bacteria, or
specific against a certain patho
gen, and even better, it could
easily be changed to overcome
resistance.”
Phages which are not the
same type of viruses that infect
humans, animals and plants
are basically dormant bundles of
DNA or RNA in protein coats
until they come into contact
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with bacteria, Bernhardt said.
They then go into action, re
plicating within the bacterial
cell and, after only a few min
utes, exploding it.
Researchers have known the
DNA sequence of these small
viruses for about 25 years. Be
cause of their simplicity, phages
were used to work out basic mo
lecular biology, but were aban
doned as researchers shifted to
study higher organisms, animals
and humans.
“As bacteria’s natural ene
mies, their potential as sources
for ways to kill bacteria should
have been thoroughly explored
long ago,” said Wang, “but it is
only now, with the emerging
worldwide crisis in antibiotic re
sistance, that phages are finally
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gaining attention in their own
right. It looks like small phages
are a gold mine for protein anti
biotics.”
Young agrees.
“The important thing is that
this is the second small phage
which we have found to make a
protein antibiotic, and other
people in the lab are working on
a third,” said Young. “Surpris
ingly, each of these phages
makes a different type of cell
wall poison, and each one is a
potential new model for an anti
biotic.”
The team hopes to find new
small phages and use them to
identify more “protein antibiot
ics” that could be developed into
practical medicines by the phar
maceutical industry.