Israeli researchers use AI to fight intestinal diseases
The new method could be a gateway to create new smart drugs that can neutralize the protein and prevent certain diseases.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF(photo credit: TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY)
Israeli researchers have created an artificial intelligence platform capable of identifying proteins that allow bacteria to infect the intestinal track, Tel Aviv University (TAU) announced in a statement.The new method could be a gateway to create new smart drugs that can neutralize the protein and prevent certain diseases.“Pathogenic bacteria are treated with antibiotics,” said TAU Prof. Tal Pupko. “But antibiotics kill a large number of species of bacteria, in the hope that the pathogenic bacteria will also be destroyed. So antibiotics are not a rifle but a cannon. Moreover, the overuse of antibiotics leads to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a worldwide problem that is getting worse."Prof. Tal Pupko, head of the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer ResearchThe discovery is also significant because scientists up until now were unable sequence the protein combination that could disarm a cell's defense protocols.TAU notes that the intestinal diseases are caused by bacteria that latches onto the intestinal tract to inject cells with proteins called "effectors" that take over healthy cells."Understanding the molecular foundation of the disease is a necessary step in the development of drugs that are smarter than antibiotics, which will not harm the bacterial population in the intestines at all," Pupko added. "This time we discovered the effectors of gut bacteria that attack rodents, but this is just the beginning."We are already working on detecting effectors in other bacteria in an attempt to better understand how they carry out their mission in the target cells they are attacking.”The new AI platform was testing and validated by one of TAU's international partners the Imperial College of London, who were successfully able to predict the protein combinations that leads to intestinal diseases.“In this study, we focused on a bacterium that causes intestinal disease in mice, a relative of the E. coli bacteria that cause intestinal disease in humans, so as not to work directly with the human pathogen”, explained PhD student at TAU Naama Wagner. “The artificial intelligence we created knows how to predict effectors in a variety of pathogenic bacteria, including bacteria that attack plants of economic importance.
"Our calculations were made possible by advanced machine-learning tools that use the genomic information of a large number of bacteria," she added. "Our partners in England proved experimentally that the learning was extremely accurate and that the effectors we identified are indeed the weapons used by the bacteria.”
