Zinc is “nature’s anti-microbial”, but how does it actually work? Adelaide researchers used the Australian Synchrotron to find out…
Dr Christopher McDevitt from the University of Adelaide has discovered how zinc kills bacteria.
Christopher has been studying zinc in Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterium that kills more than one million people a year by causing diseases such as pneumonia and meningitis. His studies using high-resolution x-ray crystallography at the Australian Synchrotron revealed that zinc binds to a protein that transports essential manganese across cell membranes and into bacterial cells. The zinc binds so tightly that it blocks the transporter – and starves the bacteria of manganese. Human bodies don’t have this particular transporter protein, so it could be a valuable target for new anti-bacterial drugs.