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Wuerzburg (pte040/23.06.2003/16:34) - An international team of researchers has managed to decode the DNA of helicobacter hepaticus, a bacterium that causes liver infections and cancer in mice.
The team based at the University of Wuerzburg http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de will be publishing the results of its work in the professional journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" http://www.pnas.org .
"As we now have all the information on the bacterium's DNA, as well as that of the mouse, we can now begin to systematically study the cancer-causing capacities of the bacterium," said project director Sebastian Suerbaum of the Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology at the University of Wuerzburg.
Knowing the code of this bacterium is also important because it is closely related to helicobacter pylori, the second most frequent cause of illness in humans, said Suerbaum. An infection with helicobacter pylori increases the risk of stomach cancer.
In addition to decoding H.hepaticus, the team managed to isolate a grouping of genes probably responsible for the development of disease. The scientists hope to better understand how H.pylori works through a comparison of both bacteria.
The international team included scientists from the University of Wuerzburg, researchers from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) http://www.mit.edu , biotech firm MWG Biotech AG and Swiss bio-informatics firm GeneData.
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