A RESEARCHER at a Scottish university has been awarded more than £900,000 in funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to research how some bacteria can survive in inhospitable environments and potential new treatments.
Dr Megan Bergkessel, of Dundee University, aims to determine how bacteria can survive and grow in inhospitable environments with little food. This research will inform new treatments for chronic bacterial infections, which are difficult to treat and can be fatal. Bergkessel and her team also aim to harness the beneficial activities of bacteria on plants.
Bergkessel said: “My research seeks to understand how bacteria control their activities under conditions where they lack sufficient food or energy to grow. We think they commonly encounter these kinds of conditions in the natural world, including when they are causing infections.
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“Importantly, they are able to survive exposure to antibiotics whenever they are not growing, because antibiotics target the processes they use to grow and divide. We have discovered some factors in the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa that are important for controlling its non-growing ‘survival’ states.
“Pseudomonas aeruginosa can cause terrible infections that are difficult to treat with antibiotics, in part because it can enter a protected survival state. Starting with the discoveries we have already made, we can expand our search to identify additional control factors.”
The award from UKRI will allow Bergkessel’s team to understand how bacteria survive and then apply that knowledge to treatments.
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