Bacteria having the unpleasant ability to evolve rapidly and escape antibiotics, American scientists have “trained” viruses to anticipate their mutations.
A major health threat
When life forms are exposed to stressful conditions, some individuals survive better than others, thanks to random genetic mutations giving them useful characteristics. Over time, these characteristics eventually spread through a population until they become the norm. This is evolution at work, and it is usually a wonderful process that helps life endure in the face of adversity. But it is sometimes necessary to favor the latter.
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Bacteria are among the most prolific organisms in nature, able not only to pass useful genes to the next generation, but also to exchange them with each other. So, when confronted with the hostile environment of antibiotics, it is no wonder that they manage to evolve and escape them in the space of a few decades: today, even our best drugs are starting to fail. reveal ineffective in the face of them.
In order to combat this major health threat, researchers are increasingly turning to bacteriophages (or simply phages), viruses that specifically attack bacteria. Since antibiotics were discovered shortly after the latter, therapies involving them had until recently been generally poorly developed.
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Increased disposal capacities
For this new study published in the journal PNAS, the researchers of theUniversity of San Diego set out to train phages to become better bacteria killers. The phages were grown in vials alongside their target bacteria for 28 days, so that they evolve together and essentially learn evolutionary loopholes that the bacteria might attempt to use.
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At the end of this phase of observation and adaptation, the entrained phages were released onto other populations of bacteria. Much better equipped to eliminate their targets, they have been shown to be about 1,000 times more effective than their untrained counterparts at this task, and the effects have also been shown to be three to eight times longer lasting.
« The trained phage learns, in the genetic sense of the term, and develops mutations that help to counter those in the bacteria. “, Explain Justin Meyer, lead author of the study. ” In a way, we use the phage’s own improvement algorithm, evolution by natural selection, to regain its therapeutic potential and solve the problem of the evolution of bacteria resistance to yet another drug therapy.. »
This study provides additional evidence in favor of the use of phage therapy to treat bacterial infections. A few months ago, researchers notably demonstrated that it also allowed bacteria to be distracted, in order to make them again vulnerable to antibiotics.
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