Sweet as can be: how E. coli gets ahead

Posted on 12 November 2009

Scientists at the University of York have discovered how certain bacteria such as Escherichia coli have evolved to capture rare sugars from their environment giving them an evolutionary advantage in naturally competitive environments like the human gut.

Microbes are well-known for their ability to grow in demanding and nutritionally poor environments, which has allowed them to colonise some of the most remote places on the planet. Bacteria living in theoretically nutrient-rich environments like the mammalian intestine face similar challenges due to intense competition between bacterial species in the intestine for the finite amount of available food.

Researchers discovered that a protein present in the intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli was a unique sugar transporter. The team was led by Dr Gavin Thomas in the University’s Department of Biology and included scientists from the York Structural Biology Laboratory and the University's Centre of Magnetic Resonance.

Professor Keith Wilson in the York Structural Biology Laboratory solved the 3D structure of the protein, revealing that it was bound to the rarer furanose form of galactose. Experiments by Dr Jennifer Potts in the University’s Centre for Magnetic Resonance confirmed that the transporter was the first biological example to recognise furanose over pyranose forms. The work was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

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