Newly discovered fungus fights antibiotic resistant strains

As some bacteria becomes increasingly resisitant to available antibiotics, the search has been on for a new class of antibiotics to fight them. A newly discovered fungus in the forests of Northern Europe has been shown to be impressively effective against several organisms, particularly against all strains that cause pnuemonia. "Plectasin" could be commercially available by 2012.

Forest Fungus Yields Powerful Antimicrobial
www.forbes.com...

""This particular antimicrobial peptide was extremely active against the organisms that causes pneumonia and the organisms that cause strep throat and certain types of severe skin infections," said Dr. Michael Zasloff, co-author of the study, which appears in the Oct. 13 issue of Nature. Zasloff is professor of surgery at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. "

"The research team used biotechnology to "read" the genetic messages of the Pseudoplectania nigrella species of fungus, which had been picked at random."

This "reading" of fungus' genetic message was a new tool developed to be able to discern if any antimicrobial peptide was present. Hopefully this new technique will speed up the process of searching for additional fungii that might also have peptides present.

That god that they're finding stuff, really wouldn't want to be around when people start dropping dead from pneumonia and the like, like before there were antibiotics.

This technique they used is certainly intruiging. I know that pharmacologists use something similar in concept, where they'll look at a disease agent, and figure out, by working backwards from the active sites, what kind of anti-disease agents to manufacture. But this seems really intersting, looking for classes of gene sequences at random, neat.

Great Find!!!!! Gonna have to do some reading on this one. Resistant strains are becoming a problem esp. in SE Asia, frica, and the former Soviet Union

Originally posted by FredT
Great Find!!!!! Gonna have to do some reading on this one. Resistant strains are becoming a problem esp. in SE Asia, frica, and the former Soviet Union

And southern/southeast europe especially. People from down there want antibiotics for just about anything...