Antibiotics and Nanotechnology

Evil Pete writes: "In an article at Nature Update there is what appears to me is the first use of nanotechnology in a significant way. A team from Scripps Research Institute has used molecular assemblages to destroy bacteria by puncturing their cell walls. The tests on mice cured staph a. infections by injecting a solution of the nanotubes into the mice."

Comments

downfalls of antibiotics

[Nova]

I didn't see it explicitly mentioned, but it would be good if these new "antibiotics" could target specific types of bacteria. The author even goes so far as to call bacteria "bugs", however one must realize that not all bacteria are harmful (i.e. there are "good" bacteria such as Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus bifidius). Traditional antibiotics when ingested orally, will attempt to destroy ALL bacteria in the gut, possibly leading to a condition called Candidiasis, characterized by the overgrowth of fungi in the intestines, which are known to emit some 70 or so types of toxins. Restoration of wellness is not possible when chronic candidiasis is present. Many people are diagnosed with CFS or some other bullshit condition because the popular notion in the medical community is that conditions like candidiasis don't exist (that's at least the experience I've had with it).

Generally, antibiotics have led to the conquering of many types of once deadly diseases have saved many lives, but not without a cost. They are prescribed much too often, which has ultimately led to these resistant strains of bacteria we hear about in the news today. Use of antibiotics reach further than just the medical field. First-world consumers demand that their cleaning products that "destroy 99.9% of germs", and chemical companies produce such projects, but neither hardly ever realizes the consequences of such a request. Antibiotics and growth hormones are given to farm animals, and passed along to humans in the food they eat. I have never had a doctor recommend that I supplement antibiotic use with bifidus and/or acidophilus, and with the amount of training in clinical nutrition/alternative treatments that most doctors get in medschool, I don't expect to have this happen for a long while. For these reasons I avoid antibiotics unless absolutely necessary, as they have caused me more harm than good in the past in situations where their use wasn't entirely justified.

Re:downfalls of antibiotics

[037]

Antibiotic resistance is not a 'downside' or 'harmful side effect' of antibiotic technology.

Antibiotics have saved thousands of lives in the past half-century by killing bacteria. If anti-biotics are now less good at killing bacteria, this does not in any way negate the past successes. "Superbugs" as some irritating media technology writers and broadcasters have called them are simply exactly as dangerous as bacteria in the pre-anti-biotic world were. Going back to where we started is not a 'hazard', and what's more that's not where we're going. New antibiotics seem (at least so far) to be keeping up with resistance.

Hi! How are you?

[Tackhead]

I send you this nanotube in order to have your advice!

Nanotechnology?!

[tfoss]

From dictionary.com: nanotechnology (nn-tk-nl-j) n.
The science and technology of building electronic circuits and devices from single atoms and molecules

Labelling this as nanotechnology seems a bit inaccurate to say the least. This is really *very cool* molecular biology, but unless being nano and in a technical field = nanotechnology, this isn't it.

As a side note, I work at Scripps (across the hall from Ghadiri actually) and can tell you the amount of money received from the Gates Foundation is barely even pocket change.

-Ted

You will be assimilated...

[hillct]

Iguess it's just a matter of time...

On a serious note, these asemblages were entirely static in nature (no nanobots yet...) but it doesn't really discuss how these injected nanutubes were exponged, and after how long. Presumably they were released as part of the mice fecal matter but how long does it take to exponge the tubules?

Re:You will be assimilated...

[gnovos]

"but it doesn't really discuss how these injected nanutubes were exponged"

They used even bigger nano-tubes to puncture the walls of the first tubes... that's how they got rid of them.

The Two most interesting aspects of the article...

[hillct]

My first question (even before readingthe article) was 'how do you cause the tubules to ofly affect the target cells?' The answer is quite interesting"To prevent indiscriminate targeting of bacterial and human cells, the rings had to be 'tuned' to prefer bugs. The team produced a range of rings with different membrane affinities and mixed them with bacteria or human red blood cells. Prime candidates - those that were lethal to bugs but harmless to humans - were selectedThe other issue that came to mind was how would bugs grow resistant to non-biological (for lack of a better word) treatments. This issue was adddressed as well:

If the proposed mechanism is right, resistance would be hard for bugs to evolve, he says. Conventional antibiotics usually target one molecule, so through small molecular changes bacteria gradually grow resistant to their action. In contrast, many molecules in a membrane would need to be altered to resist the tubes, says Ganz, "though I'd never underestimate what a bacterium can do."

All in all a fascinating article and a technology which will be interesting to follow as it develops further.

--CTH