With antibiotic resistance spreading worldwide, there is a strong need for new technologies to study bacteria. EMBL researchers have adapted an existing technique to study the melting behaviour of proteins so that it can be used for the study of bacteria. Molecular Systems Biology published their results – allowing researchers worldwide to start using the technique – on July 6.
With antibiotic resistance spreading worldwide, there is a strong need for new technologies to study bacteria. EMBL researchers have adapted an existing technique to study the melting behaviour of proteins so that it can be used for the study of bacteria. Molecular Systems Biology published their results – allowing researchers worldwide to start using the technique – on July 6.
Thermal proteome profiling (TPP) was developed in 2014 (Savitski et al., Science 2014) and enables scientists to compare the melting behavior of all proteins in a cell or organism before and after a perturbation, such as the administration of a drug. By adapting TPP to bacteria, it can now be used to study the activity and architecture of most proteins in a bacterial cell while it’s alive. André Mateus, a postdoc working in the Savitski and Typas groups at EMBL, led the study.
Bacteria taking the heat
While human bodies cease to function at temperatures above 42°C, E. coli bacteria still grow regularly up to 45°C. “We discovered that proteins in the middle of a bacterial cell are less tolerant to heat than those at the cell surface,” says Mikhail Savitski. “Surprisingly, a protein’s location is more predictive for its melting behavior than which other proteins it interacts with.”
Read more at European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Image: E. coli bacteria colored in heat gradient. CREDIT: Aleksandra Krolik / EMBL
