THURSDAY, Dec. 18, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- Detailed information about how anthrax creates its deadly spores has been discovered by American scientists.
The knowledge may help lead to new vaccines, treatments, detection and decontamination technologies. The discovery, made by scientists from the University of Michigan's Institute for Genomic Research and the Scripps Research Institute, was published online Dec. 18 in the Journal of Bacteriology.
They found that, compared to other bacteria, anthrax spore formation is an unusually intricate process. Up to a third of all genes in the anthrax genome are involved in spore production. Each mature anthrax spore contains about 750 individual proteins.
"The most surprising result of this study is the degree of dedication this organism devotes to making its spore," researcher Philip C. Hanna, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at the university, says in a prepared statement.
"It may require one-third of the entire genome. This shows how important the spore is to this organism's life cycle. The spore allows the anthrax bacterium to survive conditions that would kill most other living things," Hanna says.
Anthrax spores can survive drought, severe cold and other harsh conditions for decades and then germinate almost instantly to infect and possibly kill once they're inside a human or animal host.
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