July 12, 2010
Media tips & leads
Frosty Genes Can't Take The Heat
In the constant battle between humans and pathogens, a University of Victoria research team is one step closer to finding a new defense against infection. UVic microbiologist Dr. Francis Nano, UVic graduate student and primary author Barry Duplantis and a team of researchers were successful in substituting cold-loving genes from Arctic bacteria for genes of warm-loving disease-carrying bacteria, meaning the pathogens can grow in the skin of mammals but not in warmer deep tissue. The findings point to the development of temperature-sensitive bacterial vaccines that could be used for immunization without causing disease.
“The genes in our study fell apart between 33 and 37 degrees Celsius, which means extraordinarily dangerous pathogens such as those that cause drug resistant staph infections, TB and even plague could be made inactive at body temperature and safe for vaccines and research,” says Nano.
The UVic paper will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the July 12 edition, and will be featured in “This Week in PNAS” and as an open access article online at www.pnas.org.
Some of the cold-loving bacteria used in the UVic study were couriered to Nano in thermoses full of frozen ocean water during a Canadian polar expedition in the late 1990s. A major source of funding for the study came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with a coveted Grand Challenges Exploration grant of $100,000 (US) in 2008-2009.
—30—
Dr. Francis E. Nano (Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology) at 250-721-7074 or fnano@uvic.ca
Tara Sharpe (UVic Communications) at 250-721-6248 or tksharpe@uvic.ca
Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/uvicnews
