Seaweed Antibiotics?

Dan Gaffney writes "A new treatment for cholera and perhaps a new type of antibiotic medicine may emerge from compounds discovered in an Australian seaweed. University of New South Wales researchers have found that furanones - isolated from the seaweed Delisea pulchra - can prevent the bacteria that cause cholera from switching on their disease-causing mechanisms. Furanones don't kill such microbes but simply "jam" their ability to signal each other, meaning their use less likely to create the drug-resistance problems."

Comments

Bacteria have normal defense mechanisms

[Engineer-Poet]

Antibiotics are not the only things that bacteria have to contend with; they are food for many organisms in the wild, and they have defense mechanisms that they trigger when they are numerous enough to take advantage. The formation of biofilms is one such action.

Bacteria detect this critical density by sensing molecular emissions from other bacteria. If you make a molecular antagonist for the receptor site that is used to sense these molecules (a molecule which binds to the receptor but does not activate it, like Naloxone binds to opiate receptor sites without activating them) you can shut down the molecular signalling and stop the problematic bacterial behavior. This doesn't kill the bacteria so much as it leaves them with their defenses down.

For a bit more information on this, see this Wired article.

Incidentally, molecular jamming appears to be able to defeat certain antibiotic resistance mechanisms. One can imagine a triple-threat treatment for resistant infections: antibiotic, biofilm and antibiotic resistance jammers and viral bacteriophages. The staphyllococci wouldn't know what hit them.