Back in October, the NEWSHOUR reported on the rise of drug-resistant staph infections. The report cited a study by the CDC that revealed a dangerous bacterial infection that’s resistant to standard antibiotics now kills more Americans each year than HIV/AIDS:

The bug, called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, infected more than 94,000 Americans in 2005 and killed nearly 19,000, according to the CDC estimate. In comparison, about 17,000 people died of AIDS that year.

Experts say that antibiotic overuse — in people and in animal feed — and patients who fail to complete their antibiotic regimens have contributed to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This is because the antibiotics kill the more susceptible strains of bacteria and allow naturally resistant strains to flourish and multiply.

This week, a team of Johns Hopkins researchers say a discovery about the role of proteins in bacteria reproduction may lead to new strategies for developing more effective antibiotics. According to ScienceDaily:

[T]he scientists reported how a belt-like structure called a Z ring, which pinches a rod-shaped bacterium to produce two offspring, can be disabled by a protein called MinC.

The discovery was made in the lab of Denis Wirtz, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in Johns Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering, who explained the potential significance of the finding:

[M]ost antibiotics target the ability of bacteria to build their cell walls or their ability to make proteins or DNA. With this paper, Alex and the rest of the team identified new molecular targets that could disrupt bacterial cell division. If the bacteria can’t reproduce, the infection will die.

For more information about recent outbreaks of drug-resistant bacteria, you can read or listen to this NEWSHOUR interview with Dr. Richard Shannon, professor and chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.