A new antibiotic that has, quite literally, emerged from the human nose. The compound is produced by one species of nose-dwelling bacterium to kill another microbe, which kills thousands of people every year.
…the researchers behind the new finding believe that studying the microbial warfare going on inside our bodies may lead to not just one, but a whole slew of novel drugs.
So they tested what effect a collection of other Staphylococcus species had on S.aureus. One bacterium, S. lugdunensis, turned out to be very good at preventing S. aureus from growing. The researchers found that the bacterium produced an antibiotic compound and succeeded in synthesizing it in the laboratory. The chemical, which they named lugdunin, inhibited S. aureus from growing in the petri dish, and when applied to the skin of mice infected with S. aureus, it reduced or even eradicated the infection, the team reports today in Nature. It was also effective against antibiotic-resistant strains like MRSA.
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