Alligator Blood May Be Source of New Antibiotics

esocid writes "Biochemists from McNeese State University have described how proteins in gator blood may provide a source of powerful new antibiotics to help fight infections associated with diabetic ulcers and severe burns. This new class of drug could also crack so-called 'superbugs' that are resistant to conventional medication. Previous studies have showed alligators have an unusually strong immune system; unlike humans, alligator immune systems can defend against microorganisms such as fungi, viruses, and bacteria without having prior exposure to them. Scientists believe that this is an evolutionary adaptation to promote quick wound healing, as alligators are often injured during fierce territorial battles."

Comments

superbugs

[biased_estimator]

This new class of drug could also crack so-called 'superbugs' that are resistant to conventional medication.

Sure, until we use these new antibiotics so recklessly (or simply so often) that we select for resistant strains.

Re:superbugs

[speaktruth]

"The fact that people will misuse drugs does not mean we shouldn't make them available."

Someone should probably tell that to the DEA before we waste any more resources on this whole war on drugs thing.

Re:superbugs

[0xABADC0DA]

What it boils down to is that this reasearch is going to end up killing alligators by making immune germs so that we can raise pigs and chickens under worse conditions. That's what we are talking about really.

Humans need newer antibiotics because we wasted them growing pigs and chickens, and reducing the puss in milk from overproducing cows. Also, even if this 'cures' HIV the benefit is not so much in saving lives but more in protecting a social order that allows it to spread.

This will certainly result in a sad reflection on our society, that we would contribute to the destruction of animals that have been around for hundreds of millions of years. So we can have our pork sandwich for lunch for $0.50 less. But hey since we're giving a collective 'fuck you' to the world anyway, why not?

Re:superbugs

[snl2587]

Whoa, man. We're talking proteins in the blood...after the initial research it will probably be more practical to produce them synthetically.

I take it you're not a fan of medical research as it runs opposed to the natural order of things. But if we are in relative control of our own evolution at the moment, why should we allow our species to disappear? If the whole point of life is to propagate, and we have mechanisms in place to accomplish this basic task better, wouldn't it be against nature to do the opposite?

I find your comment interesting for another reason: you typed your comment on a computer, right? One of the byproducts of modern eco-destructive society? And you likely live in a modern house, use electricity, eat those "pork sandwiches", and probably have benefited from past medical research. The hypocrisy is stunning.

Re:superbugs

[ClioCJS]

So you're saying if I'm sick, and I'm not sure if antibiotics may help or not, that I should NOT take them, increasing my risk of actually getting ill --- so that some schmuck 20 years from now doesn't die of an antibiotic-resistant strain that developed?

How about scientists do their job and stay ahead of the diseases, rather than asking me to GET SICK NOW just to give them more time to find new cures?

Why the hell should I take one for THIS team?

Re:superbugs

[spun]

It's a funny thing, but 'drugs' and 'drugs' mean two completely different things depending on who is profiting from them.

Re:superbugs

[0xABADC0DA]

Of course it will "probably" be more practical to produce the antibiotics in some way other than making huge alligator farms. That's pretty obvious.

What's also obvious is that a bacteria that can invade a single alligator does not get much benefit in terms of survival of those genes that enable it to. But when the antibiotic is found literally everywhere in the ecosystem, like our current antibiotics are, then having a gene that enables it to survive the antibiotic is a huge benefit for its survival. Thus, a superbug that can kill 'crocolisks'. That's what I was talking about and that should also be obvious to any educated person.

Also, it is not hypocrisy to complain about comcast cable when there are not other viable choices for customers (ie monopoly). It's not hypocrisy to use electricity when it is necessary. Running a big pharma chicken factory and complaining about killing off all 'crocolisks' to make new antibiotics -- that's hypocrisy. I think there is a lot you need to reflect on, sir.

Re:superbugs

[sjames]

Of course, getting half decent anti-histamine tablets is a problem now because someone might make crystal meth out of them. When perfectly legitimate drugs start to disappear because someone might mis-use them, everyone but the DEA loses.

Have you seen where these things live?

[Shivetya]

Let alone they eat about anything which doesn't eat them first.

My only concern with this type of approach is how hamstrung will we get when the first protesters arrive? Can we replicate it or at least identify WHY it is so useful or different?

Re:Have you seen where these things live?

[hey!]

My only concern with this type of approach is how hamstrung will we get when the first protesters arrive?

Possibly somewhat, but not as much as if the protesters hadn't been there all along to make sure the species did not become extinct, or too rare to study.

You're probably too young to remember this, but alligator skin used to be quite stylish for handbags, shoes, wallets and the like. Wild populations can provide a sustainable source of goods like this so long as people don't take so many animals that the equilibrium breaks down and the population crashes. However, that's pretty much the inevitable course of events ever since society reached a sufficient technological level to respond to market opportunities with tools that make resource extraction orders of magnitude faster (and thus more profitable).

You, as an alligator hunter, may be smart enough to know you'll make more in the long run by sustainable harvesting, but if your competition is sufficiently inbred, this sounds like hifalutin nonsense to them. When the idiots are making more money than the smart people, the near-idiots emulate the idiots, and pretty soon the people acting intelligently are the only ones who aren't in on the bonanza. At that point the intelligent choice is to act stupidly, because you maximize your long term return by grabbing a share of the breeding stock before even that is liquidated.

Re:Have you seen where these things live?

[DougWebb]

I'm sure people who are vehemently opposed to animal testing will be willing to volunteer their bodies, right?

Many would, but if you try to take them up on that, a whole other group of activists gets involved preventing that testing too.

So, you think "Ok, I just won't test my product then", and a third group of activists pounces on you. There's just no way to get ahead without paying everyone off to make them happy and quiet.

What's the cost?

[MozeeToby]

The ability to heal quickly and fight off almost any infection would be a huge adaptation for any animal even without the territory battles. The fact that alligators are one of the few (only?) animals to evolve this adaptation indicates that it comes with a hefty price.

The question is, can we leverage this adaptation for ourselves without incurring the price? If the price is energy expended to produce the ultra efficient immune system, that's fine; but if the price is directly tied to the effects themselves this may prove worthless.

Re:What's the cost?

[eln]

It could also be that the changes required to end up with an immune system like that are incredibly complex and may involve steps along the way that are not evolutionarily advantageous in most species, so the necessary sequence of evolutionary steps was not completed in most species. Or, it could just be that by random chance the mutations simply did not occur except in a few species, and did not stick for whatever reason in most cases where it did occur.

To say that there must be some tradeoff implies that evolution's purpose is to produce the most perfectly adapted organism possible, when in fact evolution has no purpose at all. It is a series of mutations that tend to produce organisms that are well adapted, but certainly not perfectly adapted in most cases, to the particular environment they find themselves in.

Or, it might turn out that the tradeoff is that you end up growing tough scaly skin that people like to make into boots and handbags, in which case I look forward to giving my wife a Gucci Human-skin bag in the near future.

Re:Why evolution?

[securitytech]

If you "believe" in evolution, how could any trait NOT be a product of it?

Re:Why evolution?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm as much a believer in evolution as the next, but I've grown a bit tired of every amazing discovery being associated with evolution. I believe the real root of your concern, which I share to some degree, is that oftentimes people will be quick to graft on an explanation based on evolutionary theory to any peculiar feature of an organism, without any testing. Thus, one could conceivably concoct several different interpretations based on evolutionary theory of the origins of any feature of an organism.

However, and this is the key point, just because one can come up with an arbitrary interpretation, does not mean that an explanation grounded in evolutionary theory is incorrect. A more disciplined and principled approach would be needed, that's all.

Since every organism is subject to selection pressures, evolutionary theory indicates that any structural or functional feature of an organism arose as a result of conferring some benefit to the organism across many generations.

Or to put it another way, if a perplexing feature of an organism is not attributed to evolution, to what can it be attributed? Evolution is precisely a way to account for such features.

Be wary of doubting this ... that way lies creationism!

Cost of Complexity is a Myth

[eldavojohn]

There was very recent research that was quite extensive that showed this cost of complexity in evolution is a myth. I don't know why you think it has to come at a cost, it just so happens that alligators needed it to live in their conditions and with their temperaments.

You can sit here all day and question why we don't have some of the obvious advantage traits that any other animal has and the answer is simple: we didn't require it. If humans needed it and didn't have it, we wouldn't be around.

Explain your logic on why this must come at a price? The random evolution happened in alligators and may be present in other animals (or extinct relatives).

Re:Cost of Complexity is a Myth

[eldavojohn]

I'm not saying that the complexity of the immune system implies a cost to the organism, I am saying that this adaptation is so ridiculously advantagious that there must be some cost or it would be much more common (Of course, this conjecture falls apart if the adaptation is more common than the article implies). And yet, here you and I are with opposable thumbs and an increased Broca's Region of our brain ... why don't other animals have these ridiculously obvious advantages? Evolution is random and only reacts to the environment of the organism.

Don't believe that this adaptation is that advantagious? Infections deseases are responsible for 20% of human deaths, second only to heart disease; and that is even with modern antibiotics. A death rate of 20% is inflated because we know how to circumvent so many other forms of death. I'm sure prior to civilized humans, we were killed by many many other things. Not to mention that low death rates can lead to famine and ecosystem failure. How do you know we're not dooming the earth by ensuring everyone lives to age 70 and has 2.4 children? The human population is not kept in check the same way it used to be because of modern antibiotics.

There may be no cost

[Devin Jeanpierre]

The fact that alligators are one of the few (only?) animals to evolve this adaptation indicates that it comes with a hefty price.

There is no such indication. There may be a cost, but that's not indicated by the evidence. It may just be that most/all other animals didn't have the specific circumstances that would start a chain of mutations leading to this. It could simply be that alligators are far more likely to get injured, and therefore when this mutation occurred, it much more likely to survive than it would be in animals without such a high rate of (possibly survivable-- if you're trapped, you're trapped, no matter if you could recover from the injuries or not) injury. It just might be that simply needing a better immune system isn't enough to make this evolve, or it might be that this effect is from a combination of genes that individually mainly benefit healing. I am not an evolutionary biologist, or a biologist at all, but I think that it is premature to conclude that alligators are of the few to have this due to some cost. Especially important is that, since we only just discovered it in alligators, it may exist more widely than just a "few" animals.

Re:Cue TMNTs

[smooth wombat]

I'm going to get flamed for this but here goes anyway: if someone let's their religion dictate what medication or treatment they can or cannot receive, they have no one but themselves to blame for their illnesses or early death.

Like this couple for example. I'm sure there are hundreds of other similar cases you can find with little effort.

The joke about a doctor asking their patient if they believe in ID or evolution determining whether they get a flu shot is very appropriate in this situation.

Re:Strong immune system vs evolution rate

[MetricT]

I can't help but wonder if they haven't changed since the age of the dinosaurs *because* of their strong immune system. Viruses cause a lot of DNA mutations for natural selection to work with. If your immune system is efficient at killing viruses, that cuts off an entire avenue for helpful mutations to enter the genome. Their source of mutations has been reduced to cosmic rays. Overgeneralized, but I hope you get the idea.

Maybe we should start looking at other dinosaur-era lifeforms and seeing what's in their immune system.

In other news this day of april 8, 2018

[burtosis]

The last alligator in the wild went extinct this spring. Enviornmentalists blame over use by humans of the highly successful drug family Alligacin. Wide spread infections have become possible, they claim, as they were adapted to alligtor immune system protiens by over use from humans wanting to use them from aliments ranging from a cut finger, to the common cold, to a stubbed toe.

Completely self-defeating

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course there's some super-miraculous cure-all found somewhere in the wild. The point is, as soon as you turn it into mass-produced medicine, the bugs are selected for resistance, and it doesn't work anymore. That is the whole point. Chemical medicine is useful to a degree, but it's now reached a state where people are only racing because they have legs. There's no invincible goal state that can be reached. Back off the drugs and let the human race do some evolving of its own. There are only so many last-ditch saves left in nature and if we haven't formed natural resistances by the time they run out, we're stuck in The Matrix without any Kung Fu.

Re:Cue TMNTs

[Bryansix]

I believe in ID as well as Micro-Evolution so I'll take that flu shot thank you very much.