MRSA Notes

Strange stuff coming down the pipeline in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I am not quite sure if this is a truly amazing discovery, or if times are getting desperate. LOL

Artificial peptides are being produced by scientists, using basic grammar rules to manipulate the genetic code, and improve and change their ability to fight. These peptides are fighting antibiotic resistant bacteria surprisingly well, according to the researchers. Since this is a little beyond me, I will let them explain it:

Using grammar as their guide, scientists could easily produce tens of thousands of new bacteria-fighters and test them for use as future drugs, said study lead author Gregory Stephanopoulos, a chemical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The key turns out to be in the way the peptides are made: stringing together amino acid molecules, which scientists represent with letters. That’s when researchers saw a pattern that would make an English teacher beam.

“You have a string of letters and that string of letters reminds you immediately of a sentence, a kind of incomprehensible sentence, and you wonder in that sentence, ‘Is that meaning hidden?”‘ asked Stephanopoulos. He used the example of a sentence: “Dave asks a question.” What Stephanopoulos did was the equivalent of substitute different names for Dave and found that the peptide often still beat the bacteria.

Read the rest of the story here.

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Education, MRSA Drugs, Research and Development, Superbugs

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