Revealing the weapons by which bacteria fight each other

A new study which was performed jointly at Umeå University and the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, discovered that bacteria can degrade the cell membrane of bacterial competitors with enzymes that do not harm their own membrane. This exciting finding opens the way for the development of new antibacterial drugs to fight bacteria using their own weapons. (NATURE, 2013).

Sun Nyunt Wai, professor at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS) and the department of Molecular Biology in Umeå, Sweden, and Joseph D. Mougous, professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, studied together with their students and post-docs the genes and proteins that are behind this selective defence mechanism.

Press release Umeå University