Dr. Simona Huwiler - Predatory Bacteria

Predatory bacteria are bacteria that kill and degrade other bacteria. They are ubiquitous in the environment with important functions for the microbial ‘ecosystem’(microbiomes) and are ‘living antibiotics’ when killing pathogenic bacteria.

In our group we are using systems approaches to investigate the predatory life cycle of Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus. This periplasmic predator enters the gram-negative (antibiotic-resistant) pathogens and degrades it from within. We are generating a high-quality proteome, as well as a holistic metabolome, to investigate this predatory life cycle in more detail to get more information of this predatory process.  Further, we are maniuplating B. bacteriovorus in a synthetic biology approach.

The predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus attacks, kills, and feeds on a wide range of gram-negative pathogenic bacteria, regardless of their antibiotic resistance. (Image by Benjamin Güdel, for the UZH magazine featuring our research ).