These proteins could make excellent targets for new treatments or vaccines against infections including cholera, diphtheria and typhoid, reports Professor Mark Pallen, speaking at the BA Festival of Science at the University of Glasgow Monday.

“New approaches to treatment and prevention to help combat the bacteria that cause cholera, diphtheria and typhoid are desperately needed throughout the world, where bacterial infections still represent the single most important threat to human health,“ says Professor Pallen.

“We’ve identified dozens of new proteins on the surfaces of important disease-causing bacteria, using computer analysis,” says Professor Pallen. “Many of these surface proteins seem to have their own dedicated sorting enzymes and almost all are highly plausible targets for vaccine or drug development. They could also provide new tools to track the spread of infections."

In a similar data-mining project, Professor Pallen has also identified some new potential toxins. Many bacteria use a similar mechanism to cause damage =­ they secrete exotoxins, proteins that damage human cells, gumming up key proteins by sticking a small molecule of ADP Ribose onto them.

“Using our ViruloGenome facility, we searched through the genome sequence data of around a hundred bacteria and found nearly two dozen new enzymes that can cause ADP-ribosylation to occur," continued Professor Pallen. “Some of these are probably just involved in controlling bacterial cell function ­- but we found two at least that look like being novel toxins.”

If these suspicions turn out to be true, then the researchers will have gained an exciting new insight into how these bacteria cause disease, and this could lead to the development of new vaccines to stop the spread of infection.

[Contact: Professor Mark Pallen, Andrew McLaughlin]

04-Sep-2001