A new weapon in the fight against superbugs
Thursday, October 31, 2013 - 16:01
in Biology & Nature
The ever-increasing threat from "superbugs"—strains of pathogenic bacteria that are impervious to the antibiotics that subdued their predecessor generations—has forced the medical community to look for bactericidal weapons outside the realm of traditional drugs. One promising candidate is the antimicrobial peptide (AMP), one of Mother Nature's lesser-known defenses against infections, that kills a pathogen by creating, then expanding, nanometer-sized pores in the cell membrane until it bursts. However, before this phenomenon can be exploited as a medical therapy, researchers need a better understanding of how AMPs and membranes interact at the molecular level.