Seeing Into Bacteria

This Catalyst article describes how biophysics is helping in the search for novel antibiotics. Bacteria produce an array of proteins to kill off their competitors. These proteins, called bacteriocins, are very efficient at penetrating the defensive outer layers of bacteria cells by moving through specific membrane transporter proteins. Researchers hope to design antibiotic molecules to exploit the same route, but first need to be able to see exactly where and how the bacteriocins pass through the outer wall. To do this, they used beams of neutrons to scan the complex bacterial membrane system of lipids and proteins and look at just one component at a time. This unique imaging technique is allowing biologists to solve the structures of very complex biological machines made up of lipids, DNA, sugars or proteins.

The article is from Catalyst: Secondary Science Review 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1.

Catalyst is a science magazine for students aged 14-19 years. Annual subscriptions to print copies of the magazine can be purchased from Mindsets.