ScienceDaily (May 4, 2008) — Scientists in Italy have discovered a new perspective in the study of infectious disease. Normally, such studies are based upon laboratory work looking at an organism and how it works within the human body.

However, Dr Carla Pruzzo, Dr Luigi Vezzulli and Dr Rita R Colwell recently studied an environmental bacteria and it’s interaction with the environment and found that this provided them with vast amounts of information about how the organism causes disease.

The organism they studied was Vibrio cholerae – responsible for causing Cholera. In the aquatic environment this bacteria interacts with chitin, a naturally-occurring compound found in the cell walls of fungi, and in the exoskeleton of crustaceans and insects. This interaction in the aquatic environment was found to play a large part in determining how the organism survives, how it is spread and how it infects humans.

Dr Vezulli, one author of the study said: "This knowledge provides a new framework for the understanding of the role of the non-human environment in affecting the spread of environmental disease-causing bacteria (pathogens), their evolutionary derivation and the way they infect humans to cause disease. This, in turn, can be applied to improve current approaches to risk assessments and epidemiology of infectious disease and to develop new responses for combating pathogens in the environment."

Journal reference : Global impact of Vibrio cholerae interactions with chitin. Carla Pruzzo, Luigi Vezzulli and Rita R. Colwell. Environmental Microbiology, Online Early, doi: 10.1111/j.1462-2920.2007.01559.x.

Related Stories

DNA Blueprint Of Deadly Cholera Bacterium Unveiled (Aug. 3, 2000) — As reported in this week's issue of the journal Nature, scientists have determined the entire order of paired chemical building blocks that make up the DNA of the deadly cholera bacterium, an ...  > read more

Small Molecule Inhibitor Of Cholera Discovered (Oct. 15, 2005) — Just as hurricanes in the Gulf states and Guatemala have raised the risks of cholera outbreaks, researchers at Harvard Medical School have identified a new type of antibiotic against the cholera ...  > read more

Dead Birds Float Ashore At Great Salt Lake (Apr. 8, 2008) — Don't be surprised if you see of hundreds of dead birds along the southeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake during the next few weeks. More than 15,000 birds died on the lake last fall. Most of the ...  > read more

Maryland Scientists Find Bacteria Victims Of "Virus Conspiracy" (May 27, 1999) — Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have found that some bacterial structures and disease-causing genes actually come from viruses, which have integrated into the bacterial ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily

Fighting Cold and Flu Germs