88 BIOTECHNOLOGY


Table 1. Cumulative counts from 14 floor, 36 wall and 14 active air samples Growth Direct System Count


Location


Pre Cleaning Post Cleaning


Floor 205 9


profile required will depend on the flora found in the facility under test. In this site example a 96-hour incubation scheme can be used. Tis amounts to a three-day reduction in incubation time. An evaluation of the growth characteristics is recommended as part of the validation process.


Microorganism identification Because this method is non- destructive, the colonies could be picked following the test run for 16S identification. Table 2 shows some of the organisms detected pre- and post-disinfection of the facility.


Tis RMM can be used to generate equivalent data to


Wall 148 76


Air 50 2


Floor 158 6


the traditional test with no requirement for changing action or alert levels. Te automated, rapid technology allows for the faster enumeration of micro- colonies, reducing the time to results. Te faster time to results allows a clean room facility to be commissioned more quickly than can be performed with traditional methods. Using RMMs can achieve substantial cost and time savings when compared to the traditional environmental monitoring method.


For more information ✔ at www.scientistlive.com/eurolab


David Jones is director technical services and Nathan Storie is validation specialist


at Rapid Micro Biosystems in Boston, USA. www.rapidmicrobio.com


Visual Count


Wall 141 64


Air 48 2


Floor 145% 150%


System Recovery


Wall 105% 119%


Table 2. Recovered organisms both pre and post disinfection Pre disinfection Aspergillus niger


Aspergillus phoenicis/tubingenisis Bacillus amyloliquefaciens


Bacillus cereus Bacillus thuringiensis Brevundimonas sp.


Kocuria rosea Kytococcus schroeteri Microbacterium paraoxydans Pseudomonas stutzeri


Discovery paves the way for new drugs to fight bacterial infections


Scientists from the UK and France have gained the first structural insights into the warfare that takes place when bacteria are starved of nutrients. Bacteria produce antimicrobial lasso peptides, which have a unique knotted structure; when they come face-to-face with receptors at the outer membranes of cells of other bacteria that cause human infections, such as E coli or Salmonella, these peptides can hijack the receptor and kill the target bacteria. To uncover the bacterial war tactics,


scientists used structural data collected on the crystallography beamlines at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility, combined with modelling and biochemical experiments. The team brought together scientists


from Imperial College London, the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in


www.scientistlive.com


Paris and the University of Oxford, and their results have just been published in Nature Chemical Biology. Battle lines are drawn when the E.


coli bacteria are starved of iron and seek it out via iron receptors on their outer membrane. These receptors are important and


help bacteria to track down iron, but covert operations come into force as the lasso peptides hijack these receptors for their own purposes and kill the bacteria in the process. Ironically, such clashes between


bacteria could actually prove very useful to humans in our fight against bacterial infections. Konstantinos Beis, from the


Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, said: “Successfully treating infectious diseases is currently a huge challenge as bacteria are so good


at shrugging off existing antibiotics by developing resistance to them. “The structural studies we carried


out at Diamond are very exciting as we have identified a key residue in this particular peptide that is important for the recognition of the E. coli receptor and this detailed knowledge, coupled with the fact it has a very stable lasso structure, leads us to believe the peptide could act as a platform for new drugs against bacterial infection.” There is growing interest in new


approaches to tackling bacterial infections as traditional antibiotics made from purely synthetic compounds prove themselves to be not up to the job in the long term. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control estimates that 25,000 patients die each year from infections caused by anti microbial resistant bacteria.


Sylvie Rebuffat, from the Muséum


National d’Histoire Naturelle-CNRS in Paris, commented: “My team has been working on this particular peptide for over a decade now and, while these are early stage results, they provide the structural information that we have been waiting for to enable us to establish it as a front runner to aid in the design of new medicine to fight bacterial infections.” The research was funded by the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. Diamond Light Source is funded by


the UK Government through the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), and by the Wellcome Trusyt


For more information, visit www.diamond.ac.uk or www.imperial.ac.uk


Post disinfection Aspergillus niger


Aspergillus phoenicis/tubingenisis Bacillus amyloliquefaciens


Bacillus circulans Bacillus pumilis Bacillus subtilis


Kocuria marina Lysinibacillus fusiform Micrococcus luteus Staphylococcus epidermidis


Air


104% 100%


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