Paper Topic:

Bdellovibrio

Running Head : THE PREDATORY ORGANISM : BDELLOVIBRIO

Bdellovibrio and its Predatory Mechanism

Investigation of Hydrolytic Enzymes involved in its Predation

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Bdellovibrio and its Predatory Mechanism

Investigation of Hydrolytic Enzymes involved in its Predation

Significance

Identifying the genes and the proteins to be expressed by this organism during pore formation in the host cell will be of significance to bacteriology . The possible use of this information can be seen in the study done by Kadouri and O

'toole . It was established in this report that B . bacteriovorus can be used as a control agent against certain biofilm communities . It was observed that biofilm populations of Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas fluorescens were significantly reduced when exposed to B . bacteriovorus . This is shown in Figure 1 . Since biofilm formation is unnecessary and damaging in some instances inhibition of its formation can be done through natural elimination of the biofilm organisms , and that is through the inoculation of B bacteriovorus . Another possible application of this predatory organism is through its use as an anti-microbial therapeutic agent . It had been suggested by Hobley et al . that the introduction of this organism to a microbial-infected wound can lead to the reduction of pathogenic organisms in the site of inoculation . In this way , the use of antibiotics can be avoided and possible resistance of disease-causing organisms to the applied drug can be avoided . If the genes responsible for pore formation in the host cell will be identified , the organism can be manipulated to increase the genes ' expression . These can then be enhanced and controlled in accordance to the desired amount and time of expression

Aims

This aims to propose a method on how to determine the necessary and significant enzymes involved in pore formation of the host cell by Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus H100 . The specific aims are as follows

Identify the genes of B . bacteriovorus H100 specifically expressed during pore formation in the host cell during the predatory life cycle phase of the organism using time course Microarray analysis

Identify specific hydrolytic enzymes expressed by the identified genes of B . bacteriovorus H100 involved in pore formation on host cell membrane

Background

The discovery of Bdellovibrio by Stolp and Starr in 1962 opened the scientific world to the dawn of a new organism- a bacterium which preys on its own kind (12 . This bacterium is a curved rod , Gram negative organism classified under the group of delta-proteobacteria . It is a motile bacterium monotrichously flagellated obligately aerobic small in size (0 .3 ?m in width and 1-2 ?m in length and is obligately predatory . Its genome consists of 3 .85 mega base pairs . Most of these genes encode for enzymes involved in hydrolysis and flagella involved in host sensing (3 . The best known species of Bdellovibrio is B bacteriovorus , observed to prey on other Gram negative organisms such as Salmonella , Escherichia coli , Sphaerotilus natans and Pseudomonas fluorescens (1 . The distribution of Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus is observed in diverse environments...

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