Watching the infectors

Thanks to research from the University of Bath and the University of Exeter, it is now possible to watch real-time movies of bacteria infecting living organisms.

Most bacterial infections are studied after the death of the infected organism but this new technique allows researchers to track the development of the infection.

Dr Nick Waterfield, co-author of the study from University of Bath, said: “This will ultimately allow us to properly understand the dynamic nature of the infection process.”

By attaching fluorescent tags to the bacteria they could use time-lapse confocal microscopy to track the fluorescence as the bacteria infected a living embryo. It is important to be able to study the battle between bacterial cells and immune cells in living embryos as cells often behave very differently once they have been taken out of their natural environment and cultured in a petri dish.

To learn more about the roles of individual bacterial proteins, the researchers fluorescently tagged the proteins individually and followed their movements to determine their purpose in the infection process. Human pathogens such as Listeria and Trypanosomes could be observed using this new system. Better understanding of human pathogens could lead to the development of better antibacterial treatments for humans.

Professor Richard Ffrench-Constant, Professor of Molecular Natural History at the University of Exeter, added: “For the first time this allows us to actually examine infection in real time in a real animal – it’s a major advance!”

By Leila Sattary