Can antibiotics obtained from soil bacteria help fight drug-resistant bacteria?
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Question
Can antibiotics obtained from soil bacteria help fight drug-resistant bacteria?
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose a growing health risk to humans. Many species of bacteria are resistant to multiple antibiotics, prompting scientists to search for new sources of antibiotics. Naturally-occurring soil bacteria are a potential source for new antibiotics since these species synthesize their own antibiotics, which they use against other species that attack or compete with them. However, the vast majority of soil bacteria cannot be cultured using standard laboratory techniques and as a result, researchers have had limited success in their efforts to obtain new antibiotics from soil bacteria.
To address this problem, researchers developed a method in which soil bacteria grow in a simulated version of their natural environment. This led to the discovery of a new antibiotic called teixobactin. After isolating teixobactin from a soil bacterium, its effectiveness against MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a potentially lethal bacterium that is resistant to multiple antibiotics, was tested against the effectiveness of vancomycin, an existing antibiotic.
To test the effectiveness of teixobactin, researchers injected mice with MRSA and provided low (1 mg/kg mouse body mass) or high (5 mg/kg) doses of teixobactin or vancomycin. These mice were compared against a control group of mice that were infected with MRSA but not given an antibiotic. After 26 hours, researchers sampled the infected mice and estimated the number of S. aureus colonies obtained from each sample. Results were reported on a log scale and are provided in the table. Note that a decrease of 1.0 on this scale reflects a 10-fold decrease in MRSA abundance.
eringlolegy Ch 27 Google Chrome Secure hetps/ Ch. 27 cientific Skills Exercise: Calculating and Interpreting Means and Standard Errors ngbiology.com/emyct/itemViewassignmentProblemID 1101430688xoffuet next Part A Dose Lo Treatment (mghg 90.95,90,89 85,84,82 53,59.47 Mean val es an be calulated usigthefolowing forwua2=Ka, lnhisformula,x,iste value ofthe 4h observason ofthe beahnt variable x, niste number of total observasons, and fe symbolindicates tune n vakes of xa, to be added togefer Caculate the mean for each treatment Drag the correct values to the appropriate locations in the table. 50 10 50 5,60,84,60 38, 49,52,49 Telxobactin Log ef nember (mg/kg) 85, 8.4, 8.2 5.3, 5.9, 4.7 Tewobactin1.08.5,6.0, 8.4, 6.0 5.0 , 4.9.2, 4.9 Type here to searchExplanation / Answer
Yes. Antibiotics obtained from soil bacteria help to fight drug resistance baceria.
Research led by Gautam Dantas have found evidence that soil bacteria do not share drug-resistance genes as often as infectious bacteria.Soil bacteria may provide clues to curbing antibiotic resistance. Bacteria that naturally live in the soil have a vast collection of genes to fight off antibiotics, but they are much less likely to share these genes, a new study has revealed. Most of the antibiotics used to fight illness today were devised by soil microbes, which employ them as weapons in the competition for resources and survival. Penicillin, the first successful antibiotic, came from the soil fungus Penicillium.
Another study from scientists have discovered a new antibiotic that is highly effective against bacteria resistant to known antimicrobials, which was found in a soil sample taken in Italy.
Named "pseudouridimycin," or PUM, the new antibiotic is produced by a microbe found in the soil. It has killed a wide range of bacteria in laboratory tests and cured mice infected with scarlet fever. Pseudouridimycin neutralizes an enzyme called polymerase that is essential to virtually all functions of every organism.
However, it acts differently than rifampicin, a class of antibiotics used to target the same enzyme. Its mechanism means the new antibiotic is ten times less likely to trigger drug resistance than those currently on the market.
PUM killed 20 species of bacteria in experiments, proving especially effective against streptococci and staphylococci, several of which are resistant to multiple antibiotics.
The discovery showed again that bacteria found in the soil are the best source of new antibiotics, the scientists said.
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