Breaking bad barriers through a molecular vacuum cleaner

Lars Schäfer and Dario De Vecchis ( right ) have been working on the tuberculosis pathogen. RUB, Marquard The molecular journey of triglycerides sealing the barrier of the tuberculosis bacterium revolves around a two-protein team. Tuberculosis is a severe infectious disease that claims about 1.3 million lives annually world-wide. This dismal toll is caused by the notorious pathogen Mycobacteria tuberculosis , whose bitter success depends on its formidable cellular double barrier offering at the same time protection from the host defence system, and a terrain mediating host-pathogen interactions during infection. Understanding how to weaken this barrier by detecting how its molecular components organize and shuffle is the subject of the research. Through computer simulations, and in collaboration with the Institute for Medical Microbiology at University of Zurich, Professor Lars Schäfer and Dr. Dario De Vecchis from the Centre for Theoretical Chemistry at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, described the molecular journey of one critical component of this barrier: triglyceride. The team of researchers describe their results in the journal Nature Communications from October 13, 2023 .