New antibiotics from aligator blood?

Apart from beeing really well equiped for hunting and making prey, what brought these animal a rather bad reputation, aligators prooved to have a hidden talent. There seems to be a highly effective antimicrobial substance in their blood, preventing them from infections. Since they fight and even feed among their own species, devastating injuries are often the result. And they spend most of their lives submerged in tarns or back waters, optimal surroundings for bacteria and other pathogens. But for some reasons they are protected from harmful infections and even deep injuries heal without complications. The identification of this mediator of invulnerability and the proof of its effectiveness was presented on the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society by Mark Merchant of McNeese State University and Lancia Darville of Louisiana State University. The molecules discovered are called “cationic peptides” and they seem to be capable of destroying the pathogens cellular membranes. This results in a fast and effective eradication. In the lab, the isolated peptides were well equiped to even combat Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), one of the most problematic clinical pathogens, resulting in devastating infections with very limited treatment options.

Aligator blood contains highly
antimicrobial molecules.

But since these molecules are foreign to the human body, they would of course be targeted and destroyed by the human immune system. But if the exact structure and the mechanism of action are fully understood, it should be possible to create synthetic molecules, harbouring the same properties.

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Eingehende Suchbegriffe:

• aligator

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