通过控制营养物可以打开细菌的防御缺口以利于抗生素发生作用
（图片来源：© ISTOCKPHOTO/LINDE STEWART）
生物谷报道：以色列研究人员最近发表声明说他们发明了一种新方法杀灭生命力顽强甚至抗生素不起作用的细菌。像结核病的致病菌感染后可在肺中存活十几年不表现活力，直到复苏后引起感染症状。即使用抗生素抑制住细菌的生长也不能消除发病症状。
耶路撒冷希伯来大学的科学家在PNAS发表论文称他们发现一种彻底杀灭这样细菌的方法，通过对铁镁等营养元素的限制使细菌细胞复苏后失去对抗生素的抗性。这种方法配合抗生素可以杀灭99%的顽固细菌。（生物谷编译）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
PNAS 2008 105: 6145-6149; published online on April 21, 2008, 10.1073/pnas.0711712105
Single-cell protein induction dynamics reveals a period of vulnerability to antibiotics in persister bacteria
Orit Gefen, Chana Gabay, Michael Mumcuoglu, Giora Engel, and Nathalie Q. Balaban*
Racah Institute for Physics and Center for NanoScience and Nanotechnology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
Edited by Susan Gottesman, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, and approved March 5, 2008 (received for review December 12, 2007)
Phenotypic variability in populations of cells has been linked to evolutionary robustness to stressful conditions. A remarkable example of the importance of cell-to-cell variability is found in bacterial persistence, where subpopulations of dormant bacteria, termed persisters, were shown to be responsible for the persistence of the population to antibiotic treatments. Here, we use microfluidic devices to monitor the induction of fluorescent proteins under synthetic promoters and characterize the dormant state of single persister bacteria. Surprisingly, we observe that protein production does take place in supposedly dormant bacteria, over a narrow time window after the exit from stationary phase. Only thereafter does protein production stop, suggesting that differentiation into persisters fully develops over this time window and not during starvation, as previously believed. In effect, we observe that exposure of bacteria to antibiotics during this time window significantly reduces persistence. Our results point to new strategies to fight persistent bacterial infections. The quantitative measurement of single-cell induction presented in this study should shed light on the processes leading to the dormancy of subpopulations in different systems, such as in subpopulations of viable but nonculturable bacteria, or those of quiescent cancer cells.
