EXCLUSIVE: Breakthrough as scientists discover ‘off switch’ for bacterial infections – ‘we can treat disease before it even starts’

Scientists may have found a way to stop harmful bacteria from making millions of people sick.

Microbiologists at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas have found that changing a specific protein in the bacteria’s DNA can prevent it from becoming infectious.

The team says this could open the door to preventing deadly bacterial infections before they strike, potentially saving millions of lives.

Monika Karney, a laboratory technician at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and co-author of the study, said: “I think our research has a broader impact.”

“What we see with this one protein in this one bacterium—there is an opportunity to apply it to other proteins in other clinically relevant bacteria.”

Infection caused by Shigella bacteria, which is excreted in stool, leads to about 80 million cases of shigellosis worldwide, which causes severe diarrhea, abdominal pain and fever.

About 600,000 people die worldwide each year.

The “switch” protein VirB produced by the Shigella bacteria triggers a series of actions that make it infectious.

However, interfering with the expression of this protein disables the bacteria and prevents them from causing disease in the first place.

The researchers behind the discovery, which has not yet been translated into an actual treatment or cure for patients, believed that its applications could extend beyond just shigellosis.

Such an intervention at the DNA level could help treat many different infection-causing bacteria such as Legionella and Bartonella.

Shigella bacteria contain a “switch” protein called VirB, which causes the bacteria to cause severe gastrointestinal disease in humans

The bacterium Shigella contains genetic material that determines how it behaves and who it infects.

A protein, part of this overall genetic makeup, works by suppressing or “silencing” other proteins in the bacteria’s DNA, turning Shigella into a weapon.

VirB counteracts this “silencing” action by binding to a DNA building block called CTP, or cytidine triphosphate, a crucial molecule for creating copies of genetic information from DNA to RNA.

You could be paid over $4,000 for using a drink that causes diarrhea

Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, are looking for healthy volunteers to test an experimental oral vaccine against the Shigella bacteria, which causes a common but sometimes deadly stomach flu.

The team found that blocking VirB’s ability to bind to CTP by substituting specific amino acids that make up the VirB protein “disrupts several well-documented activities of VirB, including its anti-silencing activity.”

Taylor Gerson, a fourth-year student. student at UNLV and first author of the study said, “When molecular substitutions are made in VirB, this protein loses the ability to activate virulence genes in Shigella, rendering Shigella noninfectious.”

Shigella is one of the leading causes of death from severe diarrheal diseases worldwide, especially in developing countries.

It can easily be passed between people when someone eats food contaminated with the bacteria or puts something in their mouth that has been in contact with feces contaminated with it.

In the US, parents of young children are encouraged to be on high alert, as day care centers are prime breeding grounds for the spread of viruses and bacteria and protocols such as proper hand washing and disinfection are not strictly and universally followed.

The UNLV researchers’ findings, published in the journal mBio, could pave the way for the development of very specific preventive measures to prevent the entry of many types of harmful bacteria, not just Shigella.

Dr. Helen Wing, a professor of microbiology at UNLV who led the entire effort, said: “We study these molecules to understand how they work in diseases so that other laboratories can study or find drugs that address them Kill pathogens .”

“Understanding these proteins and their interactions is critical.”