STEALING GENES
In order to explore this question, Metcalf tracked down one of the few groups of scientists in the world who specialize in collecting and growing Archaea species, including A. boonei: the Reysenbach Lab at Portland State. With their aid, he was able to purify A. boonei‘s GH25-muramidase domain, a step that was needed to determine the enzyme’s function.
“What is really cool about these results for me comes from an ecological perspective,” says Reysenbach. “These Archaea live in close proximity, in biofilms, to extremophile bacteria and need to compete for resources. I have often wondered, ‘How do Archaea do it?’
“Through this paper, we show that the smart archaeal ‘bugs’ do so by stealing genes from their bacterial ‘mates’ and competitors. This points to Archaea being good, as yet relatively untapped targets for exploring new antibacterial drugs.”
Metcalf also spent more than two years trying to purify the enzymes from the gene-carrying plant and fungi without success. “That is not unusual. It can be very difficult to purify large antibacterial proteins,” says Bordenstein. “This was a very difficult, multifaceted project. Only someone with Jason’s abilities could have pulled it off.”
Study authors are Metcalf, doctoral student Lisa Funkhouser-Jones, and Bordenstein from Vanderbilt, and postdoctoral student Kristen Brileya and Professor Anna-Louise Reysenbach from Portland State University in Oregon.
The research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, and from the National Science Foundation.
The university has applied for a patent on the newly discovered gene and is exploring industry partnerships and licensing opportunities.
Republished as a derivative work from Futurity.org under the Attribution 4.0 International license. Original article posted to Futurity by David Salisbury-VU
Featured Photo Credit: NOAA Photo Library/Flickr, CC BY 2.0