Security News > 2024 > June > Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Catch Quotas in Peru

Over-use of antibiotics in places like chicken farms and healthcare clinics hasbecome a leading driver of AMR. Luis Pedro Coelho, a computational biologist at Queensland University ofTechnology in Australia led a new study published in the journal Cell, whichpresents a huge database of nearly one million potential antibiotic compounds.

"Bacteria fight against each other constantly in these environments, usingwarfare tools called peptides which are shot against other bacteria to kill them. The researchers mined this space for antibiotic peptides and found some hidden gems," Hiller said.

In total, 863,498 new antimicrobial peptides were predicted, more than 90% ofwhich had never been described before.

Coelho said all the peptides had the same general mechanism of action for killing bacteria - by disrupting the cell membranes which protect bacteria from the environment.

"We also see that some peptides are more effective against certain bacterial strains than others, but we cannot yet predict exactly why, or [say] which peptide will work against which bacterium," Coelho told DW. To find out which of these peptides could be useful as antibiotics, the researchers synthesized 100 peptides and tested them against 11 disease-causing bacterial strains in laboratory dishes.

Modaresi said the new study shows that >artificial intelligence has becomeinstrumental in the scientific fight against AMR and that "The application ofmachine learning has accelerated the process of discovering new antibiotics."

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https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/06/friday-squid-blogging-squid-catch-quotas-in-peru.html