Cockroach Brains Could Hold the Key to Next Generation of Antibiotics
We don't mean to alarm you, but your home could be infested with effective, life-saving antibiotics. Research coming out of the University of Nottingham over the weekend suggests that brain tissues extracted from certain insects like cockroaches and locusts have a powerful antibiotic quality, killing more than 90 percent of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Escherichia coli without doing harm to human cells in lab tests. The researchers identified nine different molecules found in the insects' nervous system tissues that are toxic to bacteria but harmless to human cells. Those tissues could be used to engineer new kinds of antibiotics that are effective in treating infections that are resistant to conventional drugs. Related ArticlesCockroach ScoutsNew Uncrawlable Material for Household Surfaces Gives Cockroaches the SlipUnleashing a Swarm of Augmented-Reality Cockroaches to Fight Bug PhobiasTagsScience, Clay Dillow, antibiotics, bacterial infections, cockroaches, health, medicine, mrsa, pharmaceuticalsFor strains of infectious bacteria like MRSA, that could be...