Scientists Battle Bugs Using Genomics

Dec. 11 -- They are the James Bonds of the biological world.

Faced with a fierce lineup of human defenses, disease-causing bacteria and viruses use a range of tricks and gadgets to infect their hosts.

Some are willingly engulfed by the body's defense cells and then manipulate the cells to prevent their own destruction. Others carry needle-like structures to inject human cells with a protein "potion" that tricks the cells into allowing bacteria to enter. Some, like the plague-causing bacterium, can even program human defense cells to self-destruct.

The battles between disease-causing pathogens and the body's defenses have evolved into a complex arms race of sorts. To better understand those battles and find new ways of blocking infection, researchers have turned to genomics — the analysis of an organism's thousands of genes and the roles they play.

The work could prove vital in disabling the tools of bioterrorists — including anthrax.

Fighting Disease, and Bioterrorism

"We're trying to see which genes are turned on and when to learn how our host cells can respond better," said Philip Hanna, a biologist at the University of Michigan who studies how anthrax infects its hosts. "The last thing this world needs are weapons made from biology."

Under a new program called the Pathogen Functional Genomics Resource Center at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Md., scientists will have access to the more than 50 disease genomes that have already been decoded. These coded lists contain all the information a pathogen uses for launching its invasion on the body.

Now the goal is to learn which genes do what as a pathogen infects its host and how to stop them.

"You need to know what molecules in the bacteria attack the host in order to develop intervention mechanisms," said Carol Gross, a microbiologist at the University of California in San Francisco. "And bacteria are very clever."

Preventing Super Bugs

The six-year, $25 million contract might also help tackle what disease researchers say is a crisis in the making. Epidemiologists have long warned that overuse of antibiotics could prompt the development of medicine-resistant disease strains.