Researchers of synthetic biology based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US have devised a system to protect the gut microbiome from the effects of antibiotics.
The new study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, reports on the successful use in mice of a “live biotherapeutic” – a genetically engineered bacterium that produces an enzyme which breaks down antibiotics in the gut.
“This work shows that synthetic biology can be harnessed to create a new class of engineered therapeutics for reducing the adverse effects of antibiotics,” says MIT professor James Collins, the paper’s senior author.
The dark side of antibiotics
Antibiotics – substances that kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria – are hugely important in fighting bacterial infections.
But there’s a dark side to antibiotics too. Increasing human use of antibiotics has contributed to the rise of antibiotic resistance, which has made many bacterial diseases increasingly difficult to successfully treat.
Antibiotic treatment can also kill off bacteria in our resident healthy gut microbiome – the trillions of microbes that live in our gastrointestinal tract and assist with food digestion, immune development and vitamin synthesis.
This causes two problems: firstly, we can lose the benefits provided by our good bacteria; and secondly, this disruption can tip the balance of the microbial ecosystem towards species that cause harm.
In some cases, these indiscriminate effects of antibiotics can have life-threatening consequences. In the US, about 15,000 deaths each year are attributed to diarrhoea and colitis (inflammation of the colon) caused by overgrowth of the bacterium Clostridium difficile following antibiotic overuse.
So, while antibiotics are an important and necessary tool to fight bacterial infections, working to limit antibiotic resistance and damage to the gut microbiome are key priorities for research. READ MORE...
Archaeologists around the world have declared a universal consensus, stating that all archaeological records can give us a consistent understanding of the past.
In a shock move, every single archaeologist has co-signed the same agreement.
No longer will there be disputes about how much meat ancient humans ate, whether they migrated across ice, or what the oldest Homo sapiens remains are – the leading researchers in the field, and also every other researcher in the field, have finally come to the same conclusion.
“There’s enough discord and disagreement in the world as it is. We don’t need to add more rigorous academic debate,” says Professor Helen Hoakes, deputy head of archaeology at the University of Eastern Australia.
“Archaeologists are famous for putting forward different and conflicting theories about what their evidence suggests,” explains Dennis Ovan, director of the Johannesburg Old Knowledge Institute for Excellence in Skulls (JOKIES).
“But when we finally sat down and talked, we realised that almost all of these arguments stemmed from petty disputes on field trips.
“Limited and competitive funding, massive ideological differences, the publish-or-perish world of academia – all of that can be smoothed over by apologising for waking up a whole tent one time, even though you said you weren’t a snorer.”
The centrepiece of the agreement is a comprehensive and universal primer on archaeological ethics, detailing the most ethical way to do archaeological research.
“It turns out that the ethics of archaeology was the easiest to solve of all,” says Dr Anna-Indie Jones, an ethicist at the Centre of Innovation for Dusty Stuff we Thought Looked Important.
“Everyone in the world places exactly the same cultural and spiritual significance in the past, and they all have the same codes for dealing with historic artefacts and ancient human remains.”
Jones would not provide any examples of these codes, saying “it’s all in the agreement” while gently edging out the door of the lab. READ MORE...
