Discovery may open door to antibiotics
for fighting drug-resistant bacteria

A recent discovery by a Health Science Center microbiologist may be instrumental in the development of new antibiotics for fighting bacterial infections--an important issue today as more and more microbes are found to be resistant to the available antibiotic repertoire.

William Haldenwang, PhD, professor of microbiology, knows that stress is a fact of life, even for the smallest of organisms. He is studying stress responses in bacteria. Using an easily manipulated microbe as a model, he has made important findings about how "gram-positive" bacteria adapt to stress. Gram-positive bacteria cause strep, staph and other infections.

Dr. Haldenwang has uncovered the proteins that communicate stress to the microbe’s genes and has discovered that short-circuiting the process is lethal to the bacterium. This knowledge could lead to the development of new antibiotics for fighting drug-resistant, bacterial infections.

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