Will Myxobacteria spp. end up with the antibiotic resistance problem?

Mary Flor Alberca, Miguel Alonso, Carmen Aznar, Carmen Barambio

4th September, 2018

Nowadays, there is a big problem with the bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Most people ignore that continuous intake of antibiotics leads to bacterial resistance. According to Mayer Ganoza Yunpanqui, main investigator of this project, in Peru, many patients are treated with antibiotics without gaining optimum results.

A new project is being carried out by scientists from the “Universidad Nacional de Trujillo” and financed by the “Consejo Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e innovación tecnológica (Concytec) . The main aim is to find Myxobacteria spp. which naturally produce antibiotics. This group of environmental Gram-negative bacteria present an enormous genome and have the ability to communicate with each other. They also have the ability of moving by displacement thanks to the secretion of a mucus polysaccharide.This investigation will take from 7-15 years. However, hopefully in 3 years’ time, new molecules will be certificated and biological studies in pre-clinical and clinical phases will start.

Many antibiotics have nowadays no function as the bacteria which intended to kill, have become resistant to it. Therefore, the production of this new antibiotic is so important. In 2016 one million of children (from 0-14 years) had tuberculosis, 250.000 of them died. The fact that the tuberculosis mortality rate is so high is because the Mycobacterium tuberculosis has become resistant to two antibiotics which were essential to cure this disease. These antibiotics are the rifampicin and isoniazid. This new antibiotic these scientists are trying to create will be used for example against tuberculosis, gonorrhea and salmonellosis.

Keywords: #antibiotics #antibioticresistance #microbiology

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