A lab at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Credit: Josh Hawkins/UNLV
Researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas have discovered a potential method to prevent Shigella from activating in the body thus preventing any illness. By interfering with the VirB binding process, researchers were able to prevent Shigella from causing any additional illness.
Shigella is a potentially lethal bacterial pathogen that can cause numerous symptoms including cramping and diarrhea. The CDC estimates that Shigella causes nearly 600,000 deaths annually worldwide. To activate the disease, Shigella contains a “switch” protein called VirB, which binds to the Shigella DNA and activates the disease. In the study, published in mBio, the researchers discovered that by interfering with this binding, Shigella was unable to activate in the body.
"When molecular substitutions are made in VirB, this protein loses the ability to turn on virulence genes in Shigella, therefore making Shigella non-infectious," said Taylor Gerson, the study's first author. The goal of the researchers is to better understand these switch proteins, such as VirB, which they feel have been underappreciated in the past.
"I think our research has a broader impact," said Monika Karney, co-author of the study. "What we're seeing with this one protein in this one bacterium—there's room for it to be applied to other proteins in other clinically relevant bacteria."
The implications of this study remain to be seen but these findings could help researchers in the future battle many common diseases. "We study these molecules to understand how they function in disease, so that other labs may look into finding drugs that kill these pathogens," said Helen Wing - professor and microbiologist at UNLV. "Understanding these proteins and what they interact with is critical."