It can be said that it has been a struggle for many years. Doctors treat common bacterial and viral infections in an apparently haphazard manner. Microorganisms are also evolving rapidly with time. Many microbes develop defenses against mechanisms designed to kill them. Medical researchers sometimes become frustrated when they are unable to deal with the evolutionary change of microbes.
Frustrated with finding new drugs against pathogens, scientists are currently trying to use a method called Crispr, which cuts and corrects genes. Researchers are now using the Crispr system against bacteria and viruses that infect human cells. This method is the next step in antimicrobial therapy, said lead author David Edgell, a biologist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, in a study published in the journal Nature Communications.Crispr is a special piece of DNA.
It produces the required amount of genetic scissors-enzymes in the DNA. DNA in body cells Or the method enables precise cutting and repair of its sister molecule, RNA. Crispr stands for Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. It was first discovered in bacteria. It helps track past injury. When infected by a virus, this bacterium inserts small portions of the virus genome into its own DNA. Stores in This helps identify the bacterium when the same viral infection recurs.
The enzymes associated with Crispr can then be used to reduce the potency of the virus and prevent the resulting infection from spreading. In a recent study by Edgell and his team, they successfully used the enzyme Case9 associated with Crispr to eliminate Salmonella. By programming the Case9 enzyme to see the bacterium as an enemy, the study forced Salmonella to make fatal cuts to its own genome. An antimicrobial drug based on the Crispr system has yet to hit any pharmacy shelves.
But by developing such treatments, scientists They believe that the power of microbes in the human body can be harnessed to prevent bacterial infections. If this comes into practice, it will be a great advancement in the medical world!