The invention of penicillin and then other antibiotics, has saved tens of thousands of lives. But because of the high degree of adaptability of bacteria to antibiotic therapy, pharmacists are forced to create new drugs, however, as the publication of the New Atlas, best antibiotics have been synthesized in the laboratory, and was found right in the body.
A very bold statement was made by scientists from MIT and University of Naples. They were able to detect in the human digestive system the peptides with strong antibacterial properties. The experts agreed that once in our digestive tract there is a conditionally-pathogenic flora from the outside are constantly hostile to bacteria – the body must have built-in mechanisms to protect against “invaders” of this kind. The study was scanned more than 2000 proteins of the gastrointestinal tract using an algorithm that was calculated from those peptides that had similarities with existing antimicrobial drugs. And the search for success: it has been allocated about 800 compounds with antimicrobial activity.
But the greatest activity was possessed of a fragment of the enzyme pepsin. In the course of further investigation it was succeeded to learn that the fragments of pepsin which is effective against the bacteria Salmonella, E. coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Moreover, by conducting experiments on mice, the infected skin infection, the entire population of the rodents were cured of the disease, caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The authors are very optimistic and according to one of the authors of the project Cesare de La Fuente-Nunez,
“Discovered peptides really are a great template for engineering. Now the idea is to use the achievements of chemistry and biology in order to modify the peptides by making them more powerful. The potential they have is just huge!”
Scientists: the most powerful antibiotics are on the inside of us
Vladimir Kuznetsov