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$9.7 Million NIH Grant Funds University of Idaho Biomedical Research on Antibiotic Resistance, Evolution
July 7, 2008
MOSCOW, Idaho – A team of University of Idaho scientists from the Initiative for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies (IBEST) has won a $9.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
The funding will be used to study processes in evolution that affect human health, including the development of resistance to antibiotics in bacteria. Led by Larry Forney, a professor of biology, the five-year project is a renewal of an earlier $10.2 million Center of Biomedical Research Excellence grant first awarded to the university in 2002.
"The team that won this award reflects the interdisciplinary skills that are necessary to tackle many of the scientific problems of interest today," said Jack McIver, vice president for research. "The University of Idaho is committed to growing these interdisciplinary projects so as to address the most challenging problems facing mankind and provide its students with the education necessary for them to be successful in the increasingly complex future."
Researcher Eva Top, a professor of biology, will use the NIH funding to advance her studies of the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Her work focuses on plasmids, which are bits of genetic material that are passed between bacteria.
Top said that many plasmids confer resistance to multiple antibiotics and can rapidly transfer those resistance traits between bacteria, even between different species, including ones that are human pathogens. Once a bacterial cell has acquired such plasmids, which happens when bacteria come in contact with each other, the drug resistance can be long lasting. In her lab, Top grew bacteria for 500 generations and found 93 percent of the microbes still carried the resistance genes from the plasmid.
“If you can better understand plasmid replication and transfer, you might find ways to block these processes and potentially stop the spread of antibiotic resistance,” she said.
Many suspect that the increased use of antibiotics in agriculture and in the treatment of infectious diseases has accelerated the rise of antibiotic resistance. Top said a likely scenario is that the drugs always leave a few surviving bacteria that evolve to become resistant.
Antibiotic warfare is nothing new to bacteria since it is the bacteria themselves that are the source of many drugs now used. Normally, the different kinds of bacteria wage war on each other in the environment or within our bodies, and sometimes against our bodies. Diseases occur when our bodies lose control of the battle. Antibiotics can undermine the natural balance by reducing or eliminating all bacteria, both the bad and the beneficial. “You actually can make it worse by not having these natural checks and balances,” Top said.
That’s why understanding plasmids is important. When pathogens become resistant to antibiotics by acquiring plasmids, they gain the edge in the battle.
Moreover, small changes in the plasmids can broaden the range of bacteria in which they survive. Mutations occur all the time in plasmids, she said. Top and colleagues found that one genetic change in a plasmid they study changed its ability to survive in the host bacterium. “This plasmid with the mutation was able to be stably retained in a new host and that’s somewhat worrisome,” she said.
Her work illustrates the blend of mathematics, computer science and biology that marks the University of Idaho team. Tracing the genetic change requires sophisticated DNA analysis and the use of supercomputers to detect patterns in data from their experiments.
Plans for the five-year NIH program include funding Top’s work for the first two years to help her secure other funding for her research, and helping other University of Idaho researchers pursue new studies.
Other projects will include continued work on understanding changes in the host range of viruses, a focus of biologists Celeste Brown and Holly Wichman; mathematical modeling and experiments on how viruses adapt to changing environmental conditions, a project led by mathematician Steve Krone; and the development of algorithms for analyzing data from studies on the human microbiome by statistician Zaid Abdo. The funding also will be used to enhance the IBEST Bioinformatics and DNA sequence analysis core facilities.
Forney credited the interdisciplinary collaborations fostered by IBEST as key to this success, and noted that it is a strength of the University of Idaho.
The initiative draws together researchers from the College of Science and across campus to explore common scientific interests through regular lunch forums, seminars and other activities.
“IBEST welcomes anyone with an interest in evolutionary and computational biology to meet informally with others who might be investigating similar problems from another perspective,” Forney said. Those mutual interests draw together evolutionary biologists and statisticians, mathematicians and other medical researchers in ways few schools can match.
The project is funded through the Institutional Development Award program of the National Institutes of Health. More information about IBEST is available online at www.ibest.uidaho.edu/ibest/index.html.
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About the University of Idaho
Founded in 1889, the University of Idaho is the state's flagship higher-education institution and its principal graduate education and research university, bringing insight and innovation to the state, the nation and the world. University researchers attract nearly $100 million in research grants and contracts each year; the University of Idaho is the only institution in the state to earn the prestigious Carnegie Foundation ranking for high research activity. The university's student population includes first-generation college students and ethnically diverse scholars. Offering more than 150 degree options in 10 colleges, the university combines the strengths of a large university with the intimacy of small learning communities. For information, visit www.uidaho.edu.
Contacts: Bill Loftus, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, (208) 885-7694, bloftus@uidaho.edu; or Tania Thompson, University Communications, (208) 885-6567, taniat@uidaho.edu
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