主页 > 医学信息 >
【drug-news】新发现：抗菌物质新家族
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090115190456.htm
ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2009) — As bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics continue to increase in number, scientists keep searching for new sources of drugs. One potential new bactericide has now been found in the tiny freshwater animal Hydra.
The protein identified by Joachim Grötzinger, Thomas Bosch and colleagues at the University of Kiel, hydramacin-1, is unusual (and also clinically valuable) as it shares virtually no similarity with any other known antibacterial proteins except for two antimicrobials found in another ancient animal, the leech.
Hydramacin proved to be extremely effective though; in a series of laboratory experiments, this protein could kill a wide range of both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, including clinically-isolated drug-resistant strains like Klebsiella oxytoca (a common cause of nosocomial infections). Hydramacin works by sticking to the bacterial surface, promoting the clumping of nearby bacteria, then disrupting the bacterial membrane.
Grötzinger and his team also determined the 3-D shape of hydramacin-1, which revealed that it most closely resembled a superfamily of proteins found in scorpion venom; within this large group, they propose that hydramacin and the two leech proteins are members of a newly designated family called the macins.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Journal reference:
Jung et al. Hydramacin-1, Structure and Antibacterial Activity of a Protein from the Basal Metazoan Hydra. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2008; 284 (3): 1896 DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M804713200
Adapted from materials provided by American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Hydra. (Credit: Wikimedia commons, public domain image.) 本人已认领该文编译，48小时后若未提交译文，请其他战友自由认领 [标签:content1][标签:content2]
阅读本文的人还阅读：
作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2011-02-27 05:12
医学,生命科学网