Antimicrobial resistance – when bacteria and fungi defend themselves against the drugs design to kill them – is an urgent threat to global public health, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
To combat this threat, the Gerdt Lab at Indiana University Bloomington studies how to weaken bacteria’s defenses against viruses.
“Bacteria get sick, too,” said J.P. Gerdt, assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington. “Our lab tries to understand how their immune systems work so we can figure out how to inhibit them.”
Bacteriophages, the viruses that attack and kill bacteria, can be a useful alternative to antibiotics. Antibiotics kill not just pathogens but also good bacteria, but bacteriophages can be deployed in a…