UCLouvain makes a new antibiotic resistence discovery

A research team at the Duve Institute of UCLouvain, led by Professor Jean‑François Collet, has made a major advance in understanding how bacteria defend themselves against antibiotics. Using cutting‑edge methods, the scientists revealed, in real time, how a protein is exported through the “BAM” complex—a kind of “guardian tower” in the bacterial outer membrane. This snapshot is the first of its kind at high resolution, and it uncovers a previously underexplored link in the bacterial defensive chain.

Published in Nature Microbiology, the work shows that bacterial resistance is not driven by a single barrier but by a coordinated system of three layers acting together. The more we know about how these defenses are assembled and operate, the better we’ll be able to design new antibiotics that can overcome them.

French‑speaking Belgian continues to produce world‑class research with global impact.

To read the of UCL article