Molecular Tweeting: The Key To Fighting Bacteria?

Twitter touches bacteria too!

One team of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) scientists are employing Twitter to understand how various types of bacterial strains communicate through chemical signals, according to Scientific American.

Studying the travel of twitter networks, they have got an insight into how bacterial strains are able to put up defences against antibiotics. For long, scientists have attempted to disrupt the signals of pathogens, which are sending quorum sensing. By understanding the behavior of the pathogens, they can accomplish it.

Strangely, antibiotics, quorum-sensing inhibitors and probiotics tend to inhibit the communication.

Radu Marculescu, the CMU engineering professor who is the team leader, understands that bacteria have made their own "social network," which coordinate behavior and build biofilm that can resist treatment.

By understanding the network, we can fight them, he explained.

With enhanced bacterial resistance, there would also be "increased mortality rates and prolonged illnesses", according to Science Daily, which helps us to understand communication techniques of bacteria.

A 2014 report by the World Health Organization (WHO) showed that when antibiotics put up a resistance to bacteria, it could create serious problems.

Hence, action has to be taken to prevent the crises reaching epic proportions, according to hngn.