Microbe Found In Grassy Field Contains Powerful Antibiotic

sciencehabit writes For much of the last decade, a team of researchers in Boston has eagerly exhumed and reburied dirt. It's part of a strategy to access an untapped source of new antibiotics—the estimated 99% of microbes in the environment that refuse to grow in laboratories. Now, their technique has yielded a promising lead: a previously unknown bacterium that makes a compound with infection-killing abilities. What's more, the team claims in a report out today, the compound is unlikely to fall prey to the problem of antibiotic resistance. That suggestion has its skeptics, but if the drug makes it through clinical trials, it would be a much needed weapon against several increasingly hard-to-treat infections.

Comments

The hard part is yet to come

[Dorianny]

Finding things that kill bacteria is easy. Finding things that kill bacteria and do not significantly harm the host, now that is the hard part.

Re: The hard part is yet to come

[Electricity Likes Me]

Exactly - evolution isn't "random". Mutations are random - but the development of specific traits requires an actual path from A to B that doesn't weaken a generation of organism too much, while still enabling them to survive the selective pressure in sufficient quantity.

That in the paper, by feeding constant low-level non-lethal doses, did not yield resistant mutants, suggests there's no easy way for MRSA to develop a resistance mechanism.

Re:Will it treat the "Allahu akbar!" infection?

[Anonymous Coward]

The cure for that would also fix "Jesus is Lord" infection too.

And how many people were murdered over Piss Christ?

That would be ZERO.

Re:Will it treat the "Allahu akbar!" infection?

[Anonymous Coward]

And how many people were murdered over Piss Christ?

How many die in Africa from sexually transmitted disease that is preventable through prophylactic use of condoms?

Your mistake was assuming that the things that upset Muslims to irrational behavior and violence would also have a parallel in Christianity. Huge cultural difference between the people of those two religions, but both are harmful to society and quite insane.

Re:Will it treat the "Allahu akbar!" infection?

[hey!]

Pathetic loser attempts to use events of a thousand fucking years ago to justify and excuse Islam-inspired mass murder just a few hours ago.

Dude, you have a Thalidomide brain.

Well then, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks.

5% of the general population are sociopaths; 1% are psychopaths. So in any sufficiently large group you you will find plenty of individuals acting in deplorable ways -- even horrifically deplorable. Christians, Muslims, rural Southerners, lesbian golfers, people who like avocados -- any group is bound to have it's share of monsters.