Small Molecules That Sabotage Bacterial Virulence

Bacterial virulence strategies that utilize Rho GTPases.

The ability to modify central host cellular functions is a major advantage to many bacterial pathogens that use such strategies as part of their virulence mechanisms. Small GTPases, including Rho GTPases, make particularly attractive targets for pathogens because of their central roles in modulating cellular functions such as cytoskeletal control. Such modifications of these GTPases can include...

Control of bacterial virulence by cell-to-cell signalling molecules

Due to increasing microbial resistance to classical antimicrobial drugs, novel alternative antimicrobial approaches are urgently needed. Virulence can be defined as a complex adapting mechanism providing pathogenic bacteria certain advantages in competing with commensal microbiota and host defence mechanisms. Bacteria communicate through small diffusible density dependent signal molecules terme...

Oligonucleotide aptamers that recognize small molecules.

Nucleic acid receptors ('aptamers'), which recognize a large variety of organic molecules of low molecular weight, have been isolated from combinatorial nucleic acid libraries by in vitro selection methods. Structural studies of nucleic acid-small molecule complexes provide insight into both the principles of molecular recognition by this class of biopolymers and the architecture of tertiary mo...

INTERACTION OF PROTEINS WITH SMALL MOLECULES

Bacterial-fungal interactions via redox-active small molecules

Bacteria and fungi are the lungs of our planet. Despite their widespread interactions in nature and the clinical environment, little is known about the molecular mechanisms underlying these interactions and their potential impacts on human and ecosystem health. In particular, secreted redox-active molecules are increasingly recognized to mediate many types of interactions between bacteria and f...