Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory have discovered a novel way to
combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria by using the bacteria's own
genes. Matt Coleman, a senior scientist with the Livermore Lab,
explains how a gene that encodes for a protein that is able to
digest bacterial cell walls, may open the door to a number of
new, specifically-targeted antibiotic treatments. Coleman: Every
bacterial cell with a wall required this internal protein,
probably so it can divide, we decided to go ahead and clone that
protein and when we added that protein back to the bacteria, we
suddenly realized that it was very effective in real-time
killing the bacteria. Once we discovered that cells had their
own endogenous copy of this potential protein, our idea was that
we could turn that protein on itself. We could turn it on the
bacterium itself and make it lethal. When we over-express it,
that's when it becomes deadly. Narrator: For Science Today, I'm
Larissa Branin.