Progress on combatting drug-resistant STIs

[rawTOP]

Given the risk of STIs when we fuck raw, and the fact that there are already drug-resistant strains of common STIs - we'd be kinda fucked if one of those strains to become common. (One of the reasons why I've banned STD fetish on this site.) Were that to happen, getting gonorrhea or chlamydia could require hospitalization. There are 20 million STI infections in the US each year - so this is a BIG problem. And given how poorly a Democratic-led administration is handling Monkeypox, if a Republican is in the White House even less will probably be done since they'll see it as "the wages of sin".

BUT THERE'S GOOD NEWS!

Rockefeller University is this weird little university here in Manhattan - squeezed into a campus along the East River. No one talks about it all that much, but I keep seeing their name pop up in relation to scientific advances - so they're doing something right…

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Scientists from Rockefeller University have synthesized a novel antibiotic with the help of computer models of bacterial gene products. It turns out to kill even bacteria resistant to other antibiotics. The molecule called cilagicin has been tested on mice, and it employs a new mechanism to attack MRSA, C. diff, and several other deadly pathogens.

“This isn’t just a cool new molecule, it’s a validation of a novel approach to drug discovery,” says Sean F. Brady, the Evnin Professor and the corresponding author of the study, in a press release published by the institution. “This study is an example of computational biology, genetic sequencing, and synthetic chemistry coming together to unlock the secrets of bacterial evolution.”

“Many antibiotics come from bacteria, but most bacteria can’t be grown in the lab,” Brady says. “It follows that we’re probably missing out on most antibiotics.

For the past fifteen years, Brady's lab has adopted an alternative method that includes finding antibacterial genes in soil and growing them inside more lab-friendly bacteria. But this approach has its own limitations as well. The genetic sequences included in so-called biosynthetic gene clusters, which are groups of genes that work together to code for several proteins collectively, are where most antibiotics originate. But with present technology, those clusters are frequently inaccessible.

Unable to unlock many bacterial gene clusters, Brady and his colleagues turned to algorithms. Modern algorithms can anticipate the structure of the antibiotic-like compounds that a bacteria with these sequences would create by teasing apart the genetic instructions in a DNA sequence. And then, organic chemists can use the data and synthesize the predicted structure in the lab.

 

 

Put into easier terms - antibiotics come from bacteria (since bacteria fight each other). But many bacteria can't be grown in the lab which severely limits the antibiotics that can be studied and deployed. Rockefeller scientists figured out how to create synthetic versions of the bacteria so we can study and deploy a much wider range of antibiotics. They seem to already have one that works on some rather nasty bugs, but many more could from the process they've come up with.

Here's the full article with more detail…

https://apple.news/Aud-NfBU3R7Sh1kOugUiOfw

[rawTOP]

And another article about how Chinese researchers have made progress as well, though along more traditional research lines…

https://apple.news/AZMD6UHDKQwyqqYbi1NcFpg

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“The idea is that the more extreme the conditions, the more the organisms that exist are going to be forced to evolve and adapt,” says Paul Dyson, a molecular microbiologist at Swansea University Medical School in the UK. Where tough conditions mean high competition for survival, you’ll find bacteria that produce stronger defenses against their rivals, the theory goes.

And in the depths of the [Gobi] desert, Dyson and his collaborators at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered a species of bacteria that does indeed have an edge—and could transform the process of antibiotic discovery itself.

In 2013, Dyson’s Chinese colleagues isolated a previously unknown species of Streptomyces bacteria they had discovered in the far south of the Gobi Desert, in a region called the Alxa Plateau. After sequencing the bacterium’s genome, they found that it not only produced antibiotics that killed other bacteria, but that it was also extremely fast growing compared with already-known species of Streptomyces.

Sequencing also revealed that this desert bacterium possessed a never-before-seen gene for transfer RNA (tRNA). This is a molecule that allows organisms to read their genetic material and, by doing so, build the other molecules they need to exist. Dyson and his team soon detected that this newly discovered tRNA gene triggered the molecular switches that control antibiotic production much more efficiently than in conventional antibiotic-producing bacteria.

 

 

[Guest]

As doom and gloom our political situation is in the US (and other places around the globe), I take some solace that things might improve thanks major advances in science like this. This antibiotic discovery along with the very promising SpFN Vaccine developed by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research ([think before following links] https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/vaccines/spfn-covid-19-vaccine) for pan-coronavirus inoculation give hope.