Jonah Goldberg Term 2 Biomedia Report

New Antibiotic Stirs Hope Against Resistant Bacteria

Summary:

Researchers at Northeastern University have recently made use of a way to extract medicines, specifically antibiotics from bacteria found in soil. One of the more recent issues with antibiotics has been their effect on the bacteria by making some strains of bacteria resistant to many types of antibiotics. This new method of growing the bacteria in a lab was not previously possible as around 99% of bacterias found in nature are unable to be grown in laboratory conditions. The researchers at Northeastern have isolated one specific antibiotic, Teixobactin, which has shown promising results so far in test tube and mouse experiments.

However, some scientists are skeptical of how well this new process could work, and what possible unknown effects these drugs could have. But even the most critical researchers say that this innovation could potentially lead to new types of antibiotics that are able to destroy even heavily drug-resistant bacteria or possibly cancer. 

Teixobactin targets the fatty materials used in making bacterial cell walls, which is a type of attack that most bacterias could not become resistant to, or even if they did, would take a very long time to form.

Relevance:

During our unit on cells we discussed different types of cells including bacteria, and our most recent unit on molecular genetics also applies to the contents of this article in terms of how the newly discovered antibiotic would attack the bacteria.

Citation: Grady, Denise. "New Antibiotic Stirs Hope Against Resistant Bacteria." The New York Times. The New York Times, 07 Jan. 2015. Web. 09 Jan. 2015. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/health/from-a-pile-of-dirt-hope-for-a-powerful-new-antibiotic.html?ref=science&_r=0