Saturday, October 4, 2008

Antibacterial Bacteria?

A bacterium may actually hold the key to new antibiotics. Rhodococcus fascians harbors genes for polyketides, a class of antibiotic. A lab at MIT has found a way to trigger their expression, which was a difficult task for the researchers. However, their seeming success only lead to more questions as the DNA portion associated with the antibacterial activity turned out to be from Streptomyces, the culture they were testing on.

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