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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."
I just can't shake the image of leatherhead from teenage mutant ninja turtles from my mind now. whatcouldpossiblygowrong?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Were they hoping people wouldn't associate a wonderdrug from a reptile (this shite) with the common phrase "snake oil" (a wonderdrug from a reptile)
cmd-q.co.uk - some sort of stupid fucking internet bullshit
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?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
My work here is dung.
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.
Good for what ails ya.
'nuff said.
just not so good for your health to try to collect it
Gators/Crocs are famous for having not changed much since the time of the dinosaurs.
I wonder if since they have a very strong immune system that kills viruses etc so well, if they have not denied themselves the opportunity to incorporate useful viral dna and bacterial plasmids into their own dna. It would be interesting to see if they have a different amount of viral origin genes in their genomes than other animals.
...
I'll tell you what could go wrong:
evolutionary adaptation to promote quick wound healing
An angry Wolverine, the four horseman Wolverine to be exact, sues for prior art, and on a technicality gains control of the entire human population's genome. This would quite literally usher in "the" Apocolypse.
I got a catholic block.
Alligator blood? Man, that's cold.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
If you "believe" in evolution, how could any trait NOT be a product of it?
Crocodile's Immune System Kills HIV - story from 2005
wot no sig
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
> Or conversely, alligators as a species have always had these antibiotics. Why is it that every interesting or perplexing feature about a species must be somehow attributed to, or be a product of, evolution?
> 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.
Because every interesting, perlexing, or boring feature of a species is of course a product of evolution.
The first single cell didn't have a powerful immune system. Alligators do. Somewhere along the way the branch of life leading to alligators, they evolved a powerful immune system. Why does that characterisation bother you?
Perhaps I misunderstood you, and you were reacting to the common tendency for the news to report some simplistic off-the-cuff guess as to what environmental pressure led to a certain feature evolving. In this case, territorial fights=super immunity. I heard a story on the news this morning about how less sleep leads to increased feelings of hunger and the reporter added, 'this makes sense in evolutionary terms because clubbing rhinos for food all day takes a lot of energy and increased hunger will help replenish that energy' huh? wtf?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
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).
My work here is dung.
-Devin Jeanpierre
Just to point out, McNeese State University, where the study was done, is in Lake Charles, LA. That's in South Louisiana. Which is mostly swampland, or close to it.
Those kids KNOWS gators. Which are tasty, by the way, and becoming a borderline nuisance down in South LA because the @#$%ing damnyankee tourists keep feedin' em and dey come up to de pirogue lookin' for de crap-touristee food and you gotta whack 'em wit' de paddle and dey bite de paddle and you got...woah, sorry.
All that goes to say....Gator sausage is GOOD eatin'.
- 2 oz. fresh gator blood
- 2 oz. rum 151 proof or stronger
- splash hot pepper sauce
- serve straight up with or without raw egg
Cures what ails you.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
check out the horseshoe crab. They were going to be completely destroyed until the medical industry offered to pay more for keeping them alive than the fishermen were paying to use them as bait. The species will actually continue only because of their medical uses. Maybe this will help.
There are already decent protections for legal hunting gator, and this may increase the pressure against poaching.
Turns out Komodo dragons have a fairly lethal cocktail of bacteria in their saliva.
Kills prey that manages to escape their immediate grasp, then they use smell to track it down.
Naturally they need protection from this goo too.
Couldn't find a better link than this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12238371/
Absolute statements are never true
What's funny is that the whole concept of advantageous traits is a shifting thing. I listened to some NPR reporters asking why native trees from New York had big thorns on them. It turns out they're very similar to thorns on some trees in Africa, which evolved to minimize predation by elephants. Well, it turns out these trees from New York evolved these spikes to fend of mammoths, though it seems like a silly waste of energy now.
The trees that didn't have the spikes were all eaten. The alligators who couldn't heal quickly all died. That's evolution for ya.
Crocodiles are relatives of alligators, but are not the same animal. I know it's confusing because they're very scary animals.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Maybe the kid born with the super-human immune system was ugly as sin and all the girls ignored him when it was time to make babies. The good looking guy was able to father dozens of children and keeled over at a young age due to an infected hang-nail.
You'd think a site full of supposed nerds would understand the concept instinctively.
Regarding 'superbugs'.
http://www.iitd.pan.wroc.pl/phages/phages.htmlI know that it's already possible to cure that type of infections with bacteriophages with success rate above 80% (about 95% for Staphylococcus aureus). Since last 27 years Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy of Polish Academy of Sciences (located in Wroclaw) have been involved in curing about 1500 people with suppurative bacterial infections, in which a routine antibiotic therapy failed.
This is not a secret thing, so most likely all important people involved in that kind of science (MRSA infections) are aware of this kind of therapy.
Why in other countries (except Poland) is that treatment still not known and not available? Lot of people is dying due to 'superbugs'! MRSA infections alone are responsible for more deaths in the U.S. each year than AIDS!
Why not to let people to try this still EXPERIMENTAL therapy?
Maybe the health care industry got to big inertia or doesn't care or just prefer to cure people with super-expensive brand new antibiotics instead of something relatively cheap.
Is they business case more important then people health or life? They just want to make money instead of curing people?
The final conclusion is that we shouldn't expect anything spectacular regarding 'gator immune system'. Other treatments are already available but simply ignored.
They will not make it available if not sure that it will earn a mountain of bucks for them.
SHOW ME THE MONEY!
The alligator does not seem to be entirely unique in this.
In my Emerging Infectious Diseases class, we learned that the tiny ticks that spread the Lyme disease bacterium are known to bite and feed on the blood of the western fence lizard. An interesting side effect of this behavior is that the blood of the lizard apparently clears the ticks' guts of Lyme bacteria. So this immune adaptation is apparently present in a number of lizard species.
Think, also, of the Komodo dragon, which walks around with a poisonous soup of microbes in its mouth at all times -- in fact, it actually uses this disease cocktail as an offensive weapon.
Breakfast served all day!
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.
Those fools!
It's true Dr. Connors' work has not yet been featured in a Spider-Man movie, but that's no excuse for scientists not being familiar with the literature regarding this kind of research.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
...It looks like my ex will be good for something positive.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.