New antibiotic family discovered in dirt

[trotsky]

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-43032602

US scientists have discovered a new family of antibiotics in soil samples.

The natural compounds could be used to combat hard-to-treat infections, the team at Rockefeller University hopes.

Tests show the compounds, called malacidins, annihilate several bacterial diseases that have become resistant to most existing antibiotics, including the superbug MRSA.

Experts say the work, published in Nature Microbiology, offers fresh hope in the antibiotics arms race.

[Historic NY]

1. Kids used to play in dirt all the time.

[GWC58]

2. When did they stop? If they have

that’s news to me.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Yeah, kind of a misleading slant in the title and intro ...

see this thread in LBN for more explication.

[hunter]

4. Microbial life has been competing for resources for billions of years.

This is a very old "arms race."

I'm not sure the chemical weapon analogy is a good one.

The microbial "protocol" for the use of these antibiotics may be quite complex. A fungi, for example, doesn't want antibiotic resistant bacterial competition any more than we do.