Scientists revive 160-million-year-old proteins to fight drug-resistant bacteria

Looking at the evolution of antimicrobial defenses, the researchers were able to pinpoint structural modifications that have made these peptides more potent and potentially develop treatments that work alongside existing antibiotics. There is an unexpected place scientists are looking for clues to the next generation of infection-fighting drugs: deep in the evolutionary past. At the University of Oregon, researchers reconstructed proteins that existed as far back as 160 million years ago and found that some of their antimicrobial fragments could outperform corresponding versions found in humans when tested against drug-resistant bacteria, states a release shared by Science Daily. The research, published in PLOS Biology on August 25, offers a glimpse into how nature refined its own defence mechanisms over millions of years and how those evolutionary experiments could potentially inform future treatments for infections that no longer respond well to conventional antibiotics.Searching the mammalian pastThe study focused on lactoferrin, an immune protein found in almost every body fluid except blood, including breast milk, tears, saliva and intestinal mucus. One of its best-known funct...