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New antibiotic found in the dirt

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DeeDee:
New antibiotic found in the dirt



--- Quote ---Publicly released: Tue 13 Feb 2018 at 0300 AEDT | 0500 NZDT


A whole new class of antibiotics, with the potential to treat superbugs, has been isolated from bacteria that live in soil. US researchers looked at the DNA from over 1,000 soil samples to find the new drug, which fights bacteria differently to most other drugs. The new antibiotic was able to kill drug resistant skin infections in animals, say the researchers.

Journal/conference: Nature Microbiology

Organisation/s: The Rockefeller University, USA

Funder: This work was supported in part by a grant from the Gates Foundation and NIH U19AI109713
--- End quote ---



Read about it at: https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/new-antibiotic-found-in-the-dirt

DeeDee:
An here's the original article someone posted in January:

How Dirt Could Save Humanity From An Infectious Apocalypse


--- Quote ---NOBODY SCOURS CENTRAL Park looking for drugs quite the way Sean Brady does. On a sweltering Thursday, he hops out of a yellow cab, crosses Fifth Avenue, and scurries up a dirt path. Around us, the penetrating churn of a helicopter and the honk of car horns filter through the trees. Brady, a fast-talking chemist in his late 40s who sports a graying buzz cut and rimless glasses, has a wry, self-deprecating humor that belies the single-minded determination of his quest. He walks along restlessly. Near the lake, we head up a rock slope and into a secluded area. Brady bends over and picks up a pinch of dusty soil. “Out of that bit of soil,” he says, “you can get enough to do DNA analysis.” He holds it in his fingertips momentarily, and then tosses it. Bits of glassy silica glisten in the sunlight.

Brady is creating drugs from dirt. He’s certain that the world’s topsoils contain incredible, practically inexhaustible reservoirs of undiscovered antibiotics, the chemical weapons bacteria use to fend off other microorganisms. He’s not alone in this thinking, but the problem is that the vast majority of bacteria cannot be grown in the lab—a necessary step in cultivating antibiotics.

Brady has found a way around this roadblock, which opens the door to all those untapped bacteria that live in dirt. By cloning DNA out of a kind of bacteria-laden mud soup, and reinstalling these foreign gene sequences into microorganisms that can be grown in the lab, he’s devised a method for discovering antibiotics that could soon treat infectious diseases and fight drug-resistant superbugs. In early 2016, Brady launched a company called Lodo Therapeutics (lodo means mud in Spanish and Portuguese) to scale up production and ultimately help humanity outrun infectious diseases nipping at our heels. Some colleagues call his approach “a walk in the park.” Indeed, his lab recently dispatched two groups of student volunteers to collect bags full of dirt at 275 locations around New York City.
--- End quote ---



Read the rest at: https://www.wired.com/story/how-dirt-could-save-humanity-from-an-infectious-apocalypse/

Pookie:
Or . . . clean up the environment, soil and water supply, get rid of GMOs, stop giving antibiotics for every little thing like a cold, which they won't work on anyway, stop with the hand sanitizers and trying to keep people in some sort of bubble, stop hitting the immune system with multiple vaccines (that contain multiple strains), and change the US RDA of vitamins/minerals to what provide optimum health, not just a bare threshold, and maybe people will have strong enough immune systems that they won't have to keep looking for the new "magic bullet" antibiotic.  Because I have a news flash for those scientists:  Nature will always find a way to keep the population of any species in check.  Those bacteria will just keep mutating until they become resistant.

Ok, I'll get off my soapbox now . . . soapboxgif

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