superbugs Archives

Combatting antimicrobial resistance using novel small fusion proteins

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Antibiotic resistance is a public health burden worldwide. Alternatives to antibiotics that can counter the detrimental effects of resistant ‘superbugs’ are urgently needed. Dr Xristo Zarate at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon in Mexico and his collaborators have worked extensively on developing novel small carrier proteins, like SmbP and CusF3H+, for recombinant protein and peptide expression and purification in […]

New molecules help battle antimicrobial resistance

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Professor Jonathan Wade and Dr Wenyi Li focus on alternatives to antibiotics including researching peptides and modifying them in a technique called polymerisation to fight the growing issue of antimicrobial resistance.

The overuse of antibiotics over the years has made them less effective in fighting infectious diseases and has led to the emergence of superbugs that are resistant to many different antibiotics. Professor John Wade and Dr Wenyi Li at the University of Melbourne, Australia, together with their collaborators, focus on the development of new antimicrobials to combat infections caused by […]

The role of extra chromosomal circular DNA in rapid adaption to glyphosate resistance in pigweed

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eccDNAs could constitute the targets of the next generation of herbicides and anti-cancer drugs.

Plants, like other living organisms, have genetic stress-avoidance mechanisms that allow them to become resistant to specific chemicals when continuously exposed to them. Dr Christopher Saski from Clemson University and Dr William Molin from the U.S. Department of Agriculture are researching the extrachromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA) structure known as the replicon of pigweed, which contains the EPSPS gene, the gene […]

A new class of antibiotic drugs

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a science article about Dr McMaster’s research which focuses on metabolic regulation with an eye toward the development of therapies for unmet medical needs in the infectious and inherited disease spaces.

Finding new classes of antibiotic drugs could not only save human lives, but also greatly reduce the healthcare costs related to tackling bacteria resistant to currently available drugs. Professor Chris McMaster, director of the Cheminformatics Drug Discovery Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, is developing a new class of antibiotics, while trying to overcome the many challenges associated with […]