News: Researchers discover new mode of how diseases evolve

Researchers discover new mode of how diseases evolve
February 16th, 2009 in General Science / Biology


Researchers of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease
Research have discovered a new way that bacteria evolve into something that
can make you sick.

The finding, published in the Feb. 16 issue of the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, has implications for how scientists identify
and assign risk to emerging diseases in the environment.

The researchers found that bacteria can develop into illness-causing
pathogens by rewiring regulatory DNA, the genetic material that controls
disease-causing genes in a body. Previously, disease evolution was thought
to occur mainly through the addition or deletion of genes.

Brian Coombes, an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and
Biomedical Sciences, was the lead investigator of the study which involved
researchers at McMaster University, the University of Melbourne, Australia
and the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA.

"Bacterial cells contain about 5,000 different genes, but only a fraction of
them are used at any given time," Coombes said. "The difference between
being able to cause disease, or not cause disease, lies in where, when and
what genes in this collection are turned on. We've discovered how bacteria
evolve to turn on just the right combination of genes in order to cause
disease in a host. It's similar to playing a musical instrument - you have
to play the right keys in the right order to make music."

With infectious diseases on the rise, the McMaster finding has implications
on how new pathogens are identified in the environment. Scientists currently
monitor the risk of new diseases by assessing the gene content of bacteria
found in water, food and animals.

"This opens up significant new challenges for us as we move forward with
this idea of assigning risk to new pathogens," Coombes said. "Because now,
we know it's not just gene content - it is gene content plus regulation of
those genes."

Source: McMaster University
http://www.physorg.com/news154027261.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek


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