Revolutionary New Antibiotic Kills Drug-Resistant Germs

Eric Hazen

Source: https://www.livescience.com/49358-new-antibiotic-discovery.html

Author: Bahar Gholipour

Date: January 7, 2015

Summary:

A new antibiotic was discovered by scientists that kills drug-resistant germs when studying strains of bacteria. The scientists tested 10,000 strains of bacteria and isolated compounds that the bacteria produced. These compounds were tested against disease-causing bacteria. One of these compounds is called teixobactin. Teixobactin is effective in treating animals infected with bacterias like Mycobacterium tuberculous, which has strains that are already resistant to drugs making it difficult to treat humans. Teixobactin is still under research and it is not known if it is effective against infections in humans.

Teixobactin works very effectively against drug-resistant pathogens because of its unique way of killing the bacteria. Teixobactin binds to the bacteria’s fat molecules on the cell wall and cause it to break down. Targeting the fat molecules is more effective than targeting protein molecules, which is more commonly used in antibiotics, because the genes that code for the protein molecules can mutate and form resistant against the antibiotic. The bacteria has a more difficult time becoming resistant to the fat molecule targeting drug. It took 30 years for resistances to form when treated with a similar drug, vancomycin.

Relevance:

This article is relevant to our science class because we just finished a unit on molecular genetics and discussed how genes can mutate. These genes can mutate to benefit the organism and make them better suited for the environment around them. When germs mutate to become resistant to antibiotics made by humans a large problem arises; how do we kill these super germs? This question is answered by the antibiotic Teixobactin, which can kill these germs without worry that the germs will mutate again soon and become resistant.