If you’re looking into the mouth of a brown bear, one of the world’s top predators, your chances of survival probably aren’t good. But a team of Rutgers and other scientists has discovered a technology that rapidly assesses potentially lifesaving antibiotics by using bacteria in saliva from an East Siberian brown bear.
If you’re looking into the mouth of a brown bear, one of the world’s top predators, your chances of survival probably aren’t good. But a team of Rutgers and other scientists has discovered a technology that rapidly assesses potentially lifesaving antibiotics by using bacteria in saliva from an East Siberian brown bear.
The technology involves placing a bacterium from a wild animal’s mouth – or other complex source of microbes with potential antibiotic properties – in an oil droplet to see if it inhibits harmful bacteria, such as Staphylococcus aureus, according to a study published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Microbes in wild animals or other exotic sources are an unexplored area in the search for antibiotics. The microbiota of wild animals may help protect them from the aggressive microbes that surround them. The new technology, which allows microbial species to be tested individually, is a powerful tool for discovering antibiotics and exploring external influences on a microbiome, the study says.
“It is tedious to look for bacteria that produce antibiotics by testing them on Petri dishes and looking at how they inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria,” said study coauthor Konstantin Severinov, a principal investigator at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology and professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. “We swiftly determined the spectrum of the antibiotic activity in saliva from a Siberian bear.”
Read more at Rutgers University
Image: East Siberian brown bears (Credit: Bear Conservation)
