New weapon in germ warfare: 'jamming' bacteria signals stops cholera

08 December 2004

A new treatment for the age-old scourge of cholera and perhaps a whole new type of antibiotic medicine may emerge from chemicals discovered in an Australian seaweed, new research suggests.

Researchers at UNSW have found that compounds known as furanones - isolated from the seaweed Delisea pulchra - can prevent the bacteria that cause cholera from switching on their disease-causing mechanisms.

It seems likely that furanones can have the same effect on many other bacteria, such as those that cause food poisoning and cystic fibrosis-related infections. Furanones do not kill such microbes but simply 'jam' their ability to send signals to each other. This means as well that their use is far less likely to create the drug-resistance problems that plague current anti-microbial treatments.

"This is very exciting as these are the first antimicrobials of their type that have been shown to be effective," says Dr Diane McDougald, a Senior Research Associate at the UNSW Centre for Marine Biofouling and Bio-innovation. Dr McDougald is conducting the research in association with UNSW's Professor Staffan Kjelleberg and Professor Peter Steinberg.

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