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Fri 25 Jul, 2003 08:27 am
Did you know that new sources of antibiotics were harvested from dirt? From little organisms that live there. How ironic! Anyway, these sources have been used for long enough that new sources are harder to find. So, now scietists have turned to oceanic sediments.
Quote:Fenical [William Fenical, Director of the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography]has already found over 5,000 new microorganisms. Of the hundreds he has tested so far, more than 30 percent show promise as antibiotics and anti-fungals, and over 80 percent have anti-cancer potential. He has already isolated one potential new anti-cancer agent, called Salinosporamide A, from the variety of deep ocean microbes he has found.
Mud, mud, wonderful mud
fascinating.
- there was a programme a couple of years ago about bacteriophages and how the Russians had done a huge amount of research into them - there is a bacteriophage to cure virtually everything BUT they are specific and so the right one must be used - no cure-all like antibiotics were.
because of the break up of the Soviet Union the funding was drying up and research finishing.
Results were infinitely better than from antibiotics but it looks as though they won't be developed
Like your mud they found them in sewage outflows etc
My mom tells me that children who eat a lot of mud are addressing some vitamin deficiencies natrually !!!
Mud wrestling is also good for you !!
Vivien - interesting! It's not just good things that can be harvested from dirt. Isn't anthrax found, as a less potent type, in soil?
Gautam - your mom is right. There are children who will eat dirt when deficient in something. I can't remember what.
Not only is mud wrestling prolly fun (I'm not sure, I've never done it), but so are mud baths (never done that either) and mud masks.
I seem to remember that you can catch anthrax from infected bones - ivory has been known to spread it in some cases in the past.
It remains viable in the soil for many years if it is contaminated - there was an island in Scotland where they did some war time experiments and it has only been taken out of strict quarantine in recent years.
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