Bacteria that causes bladder infections uses urine to create DNA

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Bacteria that causes bladder infections uses urine to create DNA

By Stuart Layt

A bacteria that causes painful urinary tract infections actually uses human urine to generate new DNA, researchers have discovered.

The finding gives a clearer idea of how the bacteria propagate, as well as points the way to more effective treatments that don’t involve antibiotics.

Researchers have found Streptococcus bacteria can use chemicals in human urine to propagate their own DNA.

Researchers have found Streptococcus bacteria can use chemicals in human urine to propagate their own DNA.

Streptococcus is a bacteria that is commonly found in humans, and while it often sits benignly, certain strains in certain circumstances can cause painful and even dangerous infections.

Group B Streptococcus remains the leading cause of fatal infections in infants less than a week old worldwide.

Researchers from Griffith University have been investigating how the bacteria can live and even thrive in urine, which does not have many of the usual chemicals found in other parts of the body which bacteria can use to make more of its DNA.

Senior research fellow Dr Matthew Sullivan said the team discovered Streptococcus can actually use chemicals in the urine to generate its own DNA.

“Everyone is familiar with the structure of DNA, that double helix shape which looks like a twisted ladder, and each rung of the ladder is made up of pairs of nucleotides, and there’s four of those which scientists call ‘A’, ‘C’, ‘T’ and ‘G’,” Dr Sullivan explained.

“Bacteria can scavenge for chemicals in order to make DNA, but our paper highlights that Streptococcus has the ability to synthesise its own precursors to DNA.

“It seems to be a common strategy among species of bacteria that make up the microbiome of the urine.”

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Dr Sullivan said that now they had identified what the bacteria was using to propagate itself in urine, they could look at ways to stop it.

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Currently UTIs and other bacterial infections are treated with various antibiotics, but with the issue of anti-microbial resistance front-of-mind for many medical practitioners, their use is often limited to avoid inadvertently creating superbugs.

Dr Sullivan said a genetic solution to UTIs would sidestep that problem entirely.

“If we can target that genetic pathway, either with a novel drug design or a natural product, we might be able to inhibit that enzyme,” he said.

“And we know that inhibiting it by a genetic mutation is enough to render the bacteria unable to cause infection. So we can target that as an alternate treatment strategy that doesn’t involve antibiotics.”

The global prevalence of Streptococcus infections, particularly their risk to infants, made the area a vital one for future study, Dr Sullivan said.

“The main way in which the bacteria reaches those babies is through carriage in the genital tract where it lives, so from their mothers,” he said.

So developing a way to prevent this organism causing disease within the body is really vitally important.”

The research has been published in the International Society of Microbial Ecology (ISME) Journal.

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