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Adele Williamson: Found a piece of the puzzle on marine bacterium in the Arctic. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Sexually transmitted diseases are awful, particularly when you\u2019re stuck with them. Gonorrhoea, for example, is now resistant to almost all classes of antibiotics in some countries. With global air travel that could eventually happen here too, because antibiotic-resistant versions spread rampantly. New Zealand has about 7500 gonorrhoea infections a year.<\/p>\n
Concern about antibiotic resistance in general is growing, and four research projects on the topic won funding in the recent round of Marsden Fund grants. One, based at the University of Waikato, explores a previously unknown ploy that the gonorrhoea-causing bacterium seems to use to grab antibiotic-resistance genes from its surroundings and draw them into itself. <\/p>\n
Chief investigator Adele Williamson describes how antibiotic resistance arises. \u201cSomebody takes an antibiotic that kills off all the bacteria that don\u2019t have that resistance gene and you\u2019re left with the few bacteria that do. They then have a massive advantage over all their mates who weren\u2019t resistant. They\u2019re going to out-compete them. Now the antibiotic is no longer effective.\u201d<\/p>\n
But how do they acquire that gene? A few undergo a genetic mutation in whatever target the antibiotic works against, says Williamson. But some simply incorporate related bacteria\u2019s DNA into their own.<\/p>\n
Bacteria can get genes from other bacteria directly or from DNA in the environment. That could be anywhere that\u2019s warm, moist and teaming with microbes, such as an infected body part or a wastewater treatment plant. <\/p>\n
DNA tends to break up in the environment, limiting its usefulness. Williamson and her team, including infectious disease expert Joanna Hicks, biochemist Jolyn Pan and international scientists, think they\u2019ve found a novel way some bacteria overcome that. It seems they make an enzyme called ligase E and expel it outside their cell membranes. There it homes in on broken DNA and repairs it so it again codes for antibiotic resistance. The bacteria then pull the repaired DNA strand inside themselves, perhaps with ligase E protecting it as it crosses the cell membrane, and incorporate it into their own genome.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s persuasive evidence for this hypothesis. For example, deleting the bacteria\u2019s ligase E gene means it doesn\u2019t become antibiotic resistant as easily. But there\u2019s still proof-of-concept work to do, which the Marsden grant will fund.<\/p>\n
The research is the latest step in Williamson\u2019s exploration of the ligase E gene, which she came across by chance deep in the Arctic when working at a Norwegian university. There she found ligase E in marine bacteria. And she couldn\u2019t let go of a certain enigma. \u201cWe were scratching our heads. That\u2019s weird. It\u2019s got a signal on it saying \u2018send me outside the cell\u2019. Why would a bacteria make a protein that should join pieces of DNA and then spit it outside? Bacteria\u2019s DNA is inside the cell.\u201d<\/p>\n
It turned out that gonorrhoea, campylobacter and cholera also make ligase E, like Williamson\u2019s cold-loving bacteria. The discovery has turned into an endeavour that could tackle antibiotic resistance in highly problematic diseases. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf we could find a way to actually stop some of these repair processes that are allowing bacteria to pick up new bits of DNA, or we could interfere with that process, then the long-term idea would be can we interfere with that to help curb the spread of resistance?\u201d<\/p>\n
The potential benefits are obvious, but the discovery came from studying the natural world in a \u201cblue-sky\u201d way, meaning real-world applications weren\u2019t known at first. \u201cThe journey would never have started if I hadn\u2019t been able to get some funding and [without] the support of the university I was at in Norway. It\u2019s so important that mechanisms like the Marsden Fund can continue to support this type of research.\u201d <\/p>\n
The fund administered by the Royal Society Te Ap\u0101rangi faces successive cuts and the government in 2024 withdrew support for social sciences and humanities research. <\/p>\n
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