How do bacteria survive with low oxygen?

Blocking one enzyme could disrupt low-oxygen bacterial survival

Researchers in Leiden report the first direct observations of how a specialized enzyme enables bacteria to remain alive when oxygen is scarce. The study centers on a survival pathway that becomes crucial in low-oxygen environments—conditions that are common both in nature and inside the human body.

The experimental results describe a mechanistic step: when oxygen levels drop, the enzyme’s activity supports bacterial persistence by helping maintain essential cellular processes under stress. Importantly, the work goes beyond describing the pathway. The team also shows that this process can be interrupted.

By blocking the enzyme, the researchers demonstrate a way to impair how bacteria cope with oxygen-limited conditions. That potential “switch” matters for antimicrobial development because many existing antibiotics target processes that can be less effective—or behave differently—depending on the environmental context of the pathogen.

If a low-oxygen survival enzyme is broadly important for certain bacteria, then inhibiting it could help researchers design antibiotics that work even in oxygen-poor niches, such as tissues where oxygen diffusion is limited. That could expand where and when treatments are effective, especially against infections that exploit low-oxygen microenvironments.

The work frames this as a new vulnerability: bacteria may not only require oxygen for growth, but also rely on oxygen-responsive enzymatic systems to survive until conditions improve. The study’s significance is its combination of mechanistic visualization with a proof-of-concept intervention—moving from “how bacteria endure” to “what can be targeted to stop it.”