Pathogenic Bacteria Use a Sugar in the Intestinal Mucus Layer to Infect the Gut, Study Shows
Published:25 Jul.2023 Source:University of British Columbia
The findings, published in PNAS, suggest a potential treatment target for intestinal bacterial infections and a range of chronic diseases linked to gut bacteria, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome and short bowel syndrome.
"Bacteria need to find a place in our intestines to take hold, establish and expand, and then they need to overcome all the different defences that normally protect our gut," says Dr. Bruce Vallance, a professor in the department of pediatrics at UBC and investigator at BC Children's Hospital. "In the future, we can potentially target this sugar, or how pathogens sense it, to prevent clinically important disease."
Inflammatory diseases such as IBD are on the rise in children, and because of their immature immune systems, kids are more susceptible to gut bacterial infections. Dr. Vallance and his team, including lead author and UBC graduate student Qiaochu Liang and UBC research associate Dr. Hongbing Yu, sought to understand what enables these bacterial pathogens to survive and expand inside our intestines.
For the study, the researchers examined Citrobacter rodentium, an intestinal bacterial pathogen of mice that's used to model infections with human E. coli. The team discovered that the bacteria have genes involved in sialic acid consumption, and when these genes are removed, the bacteria's growth is impaired.