New class of antibiotic found in dirt could prove resistant to resistance

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/01/07/new-class-of-antibiotic-found-in-dirt-could-prove-resistant-to-resistance/

By: Rachel Feltman

Published: January 7, 2015 by The Washington Post

Summary

Bacteria have been evolving to resist antibiotics quicker than we can form new treatments.  When an antibiotic is put into use, the bacteria get accustomed to its effects and, eventually, become resistant to it.  However, a new antibiotic has been found with a unique way of stopping proliferation which may be able to put an end to these resistant bacteria.  This new antibiotic was discovered by a Northeastern University professor, Kim Lewis, when experimenting with a sample of dirt in a field in Maine.  Lewis and his coworkers placed soil between two semi-permeable membranes, making the soil microbes grow like the laboratory conditions were a natural environment.  A Teixobactin, a specific chemical compound, was identified by the experiment.  It destroyed drug-resistant TB and MRSA in the cells of mice.  The antibiotic performed this action with the bacteria neither gaining any resistance nor killing the mice. The mice that were infected with the MRSA and given pneumonia did not show any notable side effects either.  This new type of antibiotic aims at the building blocks of the bacteria’s cell wall, not at the proteins inside like most antibiotics do.  Teixobactin binds two lipids that are essential in cell wall production, so if one of the lipids grows a resistance, the other could still be attacked.  This tactic was successfully tested, but there is no compound in existence that bacteria will never grow resistant to.  However, Teixobactin will definitely take much longer for the bacteria to counter.

Relevance

This article is relevant to unit 6 because the unit mentions the ability of bacteria to adapt to new antibiotics in 14.5 and how it has cause the evolution of antibiotic-resistant populations.  This article is all about trying to solve that predicament by using a different technique, targeting the cell wall and not the protein.  This article talks about how we can try to stop bacteria from constantly counteracting our antibiotics, and how we might be able to slow it, but all compounds can be, eventually, resisted by bacteria.  This shows that the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria will never be completely solved, but it can, and hopefully, will be decelerated by Teixobactin.