Researchers discover how bacterium that causes cholera establishes itself in intestine

Scientists at the University of York have made an important discovery in understanding the mechanics of how Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium that causes cholera, establishes itself in the intestine. V. cholerae harvests and then consumes sialic acid, a sugar that is found on the surface of intestine cells. The research team, led by Dr. Gavin Thomas, studied this process and found that it was able to occur because the bacterium uses a tripartite ATP-independent periplasmic (TRAP) transporter to identify and take the sialic acid. This discovery of how the pathogen is able to thrive could lead to ways of stopping it, preventing the more than 100,000 cholera deaths each year. "This work continues our discoveries of how bacteria that grow in our body exploit sialic acid for their survival and help us to take forward our efforts to design chemicals to inhibit these processes in different bacterial pathogens," explains Thomas.