Title: PLoS ONE: Antifungal Activity of Microbial Secondary Metabolites
“Secondary metabolites are well known for their ability to impede other microorganisms. Reanalysis of a screen of natural products using the Caenorhabditis elegans-Candida albicans infection model identified twelve microbial secondary metabolites capable of conferring an increase in survival to infected nematodes.”
I keep thinking of the Post-antimicrobial Age. Like in this paper, we have spent the last century isolating what Nature has produced (raiding Nature’s pantry?), occasionally tweaking the compounds as they became ineffective.
The thing is, Nature evolves much quicker than we can, and can sample a much broader and complex space of adjacent possible than we can. We’re just not keeping up.
Many are worried that the numbers of new antibiotics per year is going down; that for many nasty pathogens, we’re at a last effective drug or entering the realm of super-resistance. Indeed, it seems that at our current pace, we’re set to lose (though people have been saying that for at least the 15 years I’ve been tracking it).
I see at least two areas that would need to be improved: 1) a more practical use of microbes – better screening of Nature’s solutions, better understanding of the ecology of pathogenesis (these point towards solutions, as is described in the paper above); 2) greater speed in evolving new molecules, exploring adjacent possibles, much like Nature does (rather than slow tweaking of existing molecules).
In short, until we start thinking like microbes, we’re stuck with an ever diminishing arsenal of anti-microbials.
What do you think?
