The Bacterial Invasion Port of Bdellovibrio

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There is a great need to find new ways to destroy bacterial pathogens now that many are becoming resistant to antibiotics and antibacterials. It is important to prevent plant crops and farm animals against diseases, as well as to protect human health. Some predatory bacteria that are harmless to humans naturally kill bacterial pathogens by building a molecular "port" in them and entering through this port to kill them. Importantly, because this access port is build from several molecular parts, it is not easy for the pathogens to adapt to not fit one of the parts and so escape being invaded. Also the things that are pumped through the port are good at attacking bacterial membranes- there arent many antibiotics that do that. Because Bdellovibrio only attack bacteria they don't harm humans or their membranes.We recently identified some of the parts of the natural invasion port of the predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio, and some control proteins that work with the port. We now want to find out how those parts work together to build and co-ordinate what the port does so we know how bacterial membranes are invaded. Then we will be able to use all these parts to build a toolkit to make pathogenic bacteria be invaded and killed.In this project we are trying to find out what protein chemicals are pumped through the port into the bacteria and when, and what attaches the port to the bacteria while the predatory bacteria are pumping in the membrane damaging proteins.We can use a simple coloured test to see if a protein is damaging the membrane of a bacterium. If the membrane is damaged then the coloured dye goes pink. In this way we can test proteins coded by the DNA of the bacteria and see which make the dye go pink when exposed to bacteria, to see if they are damaged by each protein.We also think that some of the same proteins that pull the Bdellovibrio inside the bacteria can then do a transformation by bolting on different proteins and start to act as a pump to pump more degrading proteins into the bacteria to break them down. We will test this too.From the project we will learn how to tackle pathogenic bacteria in farms or in public or in hospital buildings by attacking their outer membranes with Bdellovibrio-derived materials. These could go on to help as working antibiotics become scarcer.