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from the like-throwing-stars-but-smaller dept.
Tiny, star-shaped molecules are effective at killing bacteria that can no longer be killed by current antibiotics, new research shows.
The study, published today in Nature Microbiology, holds promise for a new treatment method against antibiotic-resistant bacteria (commonly known as superbugs).
The star-shaped structures, are short chains of proteins called 'peptide polymers', and were created by a team from the Melbourne School of Engineering.
...
tests undertaken on red blood cells showed that the star-shaped polymer dosage rate would need to be increased by a factor of greater than 100 to become toxic. The star-shaped peptide polymer is also effective in killing superbugs when tested in animal models.Furthermore, superbugs showed no signs of resistance against these peptide polymers. The team discovered that their star-shaped peptide polymers can kill bacteria with multiple pathways, unlike most antibiotics which kill with a single pathway.
Let's hope any such molecules are thoroughly vetted with long-term studies before being introduced to medical therapies.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:12PM
Sorry, but a lot of bacterial evolution *does* work that way. And even some non-bacterial evolution, though not much.
Bacteria share genes rather freely, and they don't respect species boundaries. And occasionally you get something really weird because of that. Did you know that pea plants secrete hemoglobin in their rootlets? Hemoglobin is such a unique molecule that the only reasonable way for it to have gotten to pea plants is if a bacterium (or virus) picked it up from a chordate (I'm not a biochemist, so I don't know which branch of chordata would be involved, but it could probably be narrowed down quite a bit, possibly as much as "some ancestor of modern canines".), and then infected a pea plant ancestor and embedded the genes it had borrowed into the hereditary line. Now *THAT'S* unusual. But bacteria share genes among themselves all the time. So the grandparent's argument is valid, if not the only possibility.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday September 15 2016, @03:32AM
No argument that it can happen that way, but it doesn't exactly take a long time for it to happen through more traditional mutation-based evolution either.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:45PM
No argument that it can happen that way, but it doesn't exactly take a long time for it to happen through more traditional mutation-based evolution either.
That's probably true, but given how pervasive the genetic exchange is, it's not clear how to estimate time to adapt to a feature that nothing has previously encountered. My guess would be the same as yours (not long), but my certainty would be a lot lower.
That said, it didn't take long before SOME bug figured out how to eat polystyrene. But nothing yet has figured out how to make a living doing it (probably because of the lack of water). So it's not clear how long it will be before something evolves to eat these things. It's possible that there's no easy way from here to there. Basalt has proven relatively immune to bacteriological degradation for millennia.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.