Substance In Turkey Could Help Produce Life-Saving Antibiotic

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
When you sit down to enjoy your turkey dinner this Thanksgiving, you can do so content in the knowledge that it will not only tickle your taste buds, but it could one day help save your life, according to research appearing in the December edition of the Journal of Bacteriology.
In the new study, BYU microbiologist Joel Griffitts and his colleagues explain that the biological agent required to produce a potentially life-saving antibiotic can be found in turkeys. This microbe, known as Strain 115, produces the MP1 antibiotic that can help combat staph infections, strep throat and nearly half of all infectious bacteria.
“Our research group is certainly thankful for turkeys,” Griffitts, whose team is exploring the origins of the turkey-born antibiotic, said in a statement. “The good bacteria we’re studying has been keeping turkey farms healthy for years and it has the potential to keep humans healthy as well.”
Currently, the complex structure of the antibiotic prohibits it from being used on a widespread basis. However, the study authors have been using a combination of spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in order to change that by determining how Strain 115 is capable of producing MP1 without killing itself in the process.
“What they’re finding,” BYU said, “is that the mechanism for producing it is surprisingly simple.”
According to the researchers, a compact DNA molecule located inside of Strain 115 produces both the killer antibiotic and a special substance that protects itself. This molecule, also known as a plasmid, creates a backup ribosome part that can be inserted into a normal ribosome, thus making it immune to the antibiotic. Griffiths compared it to putting special tires on an automobile in order to protect the vehicle against unusually hazardous road conditions.
“But what makes this turkey story so great is that, just like Thanksgiving, it has a great beginning,” the university noted. “It started with a turkey farm more than three decades ago, when now-retired BYU professor Marcus Jensen discovered Strain 115… [and] went on to develop three vaccines vital to the prevention of diseases in turkeys.”
Despite the fact that his work with turkeys became widely known and won him multiple awards, Jensen decided to shelve his work and take his research in other directions back in 1983. Now, three decades later, the strain was discovered in a freezer by a BYU student, causing work on the project to resume and leading to the new study.
“Sometimes bacteria retire with the people who discover them. We simply rediscovered it and now we are capitalizing on it once again,” said Griffitts, who co-authored the study along with Philip R. Bennallack, Michael J. Heder and Richard A. Robison of the BYU Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology and Scott R. Burt of the Provo, Utah university’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
The new study comes just in time for Thanksgiving, a holiday in which 46 million turkeys are consumed by people celebrating the holiday in the US, and during which 88 percent of Americans dine on the succulent bird. Of course, it’s far from the only day in which turkey is consumed here in the US – in 2011, 736 million pounds of turkey were consumed, and consumption of the poultry product has increased by 104 percent during since 1970.
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