London, Aug 1 - Numerous pathogens contain an 'internal time bomb', a deadly mechanism that can be used against them, a new study has found.

After years of work, Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) worked out the structure and operating mechanism of the proteins involved.

This opens the way for manipulating this internal time bomb and hopefully developing a new class of antibiotics.

For years, Nathalie de Jonge, Remy Loris and their colleagues at the VUB assiduously studied the precise structure and function of the toxin-antitoxin (T-A) complex, a fringe area in research.

All living creatures, people as well as bacteria, store their genetic information in the same way, i.e. in the DNA.

Every human cell contains 46 neatly folded DNA strands that together measure two metres, while bacteria have to make do with around one mm of DNA.

A piece of DNA containing the recipe for one characteristic, such as 'how to make citric acid' or 'how to make hair curl', is called a gene. Humans have several tens of thousands of genes.

If your genetic information becomes damaged, you have a good chance of becoming ill or even dying. This is also true for bacteria, which over time developed a handy way of providing extra protection to important genes -- the toxin-antitoxin (T-A) system.