How Pathogens Ensure Infections Succeed

As most of you know, the only goal a pathogen has when invading the human body is ensuring its survival and multiplication; but now researchers suggest that some organisms are more cunning than others in doing so.

A large portion of microorganisms that invade the body tend to enter cells immediately, where they begin multiplying and spreading all around.

But a series of investigations by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, in Berlin, Germany, and the Harvard University, in the US, proved that some invaders can be, for lack of a better word, more patient than others.

That is to say, these microorganisms employ a very special type of infection strategy, in which they avoid entering the cells themselves for a prolonged period of time, AlphaGalileo reports.

The way this is accomplished is when certain types of intestinal pathogens release chemical agents capable of hardening cellular walls. The chemicals are produced when the invaders touch the cell.

The strengthening of the cellular skeleton prevents the pathogens from entering the cell. Details of this strategy appear in the August 24 issue of the open-access scientific journal PLoS Biology.

The team focused its attention on the known bacteria Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which infects the urogenital tract, the uterus and the ovaries. The surface of the microorganism is covered with a series of thread-shaped proteins, that allow it to affix itself onto target cells.

As this happens, the surface of the bacteria undergoes extensive modifications, all of which are meant to ensure that it is not recognized by the immune system.

The organism will continue to act from outside human cells for a very long time, and they will move in at later stage of the infection.

Even if the German team set to work seeking to determine the mechanisms N. gonorrhoeae uses to enter human cells, they quickly discovered that the bacteria puts equally-intense efforts into staying out of cells at the same time.

In order to avoid being engulfed by the tiny vesicles cells use for transporting chemicals in and out, the pathogen produces chemicals that harden the cellular surface right beneath their location.

By inhibiting the chemical pathway the bacteria uses to maintain this ability, researchers could conceivably develop a new therapy against these bacteria.