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MOTHER’S MILK FROM the marsupials known as Tasmanian devils could help the global fight against increasingly deadly “superbugs” which resist antibiotics.
Superbugs are bacteria which cannot be treated by current antibiotics and other drugs, with a recent British study saying they could kill up to 10 million people globally by 2050.
Scientists at the University of Sydney found that peptides in the marsupial’s milk killed resistant bacteria, including methicillin-resistant golden staph bacteria and enterococcus that is resistant to the powerful antibiotic vancomycin.
The researchers turned to marsupials like the devil — which carry their young in a pouch after birth to complete their development — because of their biology.
The underdeveloped young have an immature immune system when they are born, yet survive growth in their mother’s bacteria-filled pouch.
“We think this has led to an expansion of these peptides in marsupials,” University of Sydney PhD candidate Emma Peel, who worked on the research published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, told AFP.
“Marsupials have more peptides than other mammals. In the devil we found six, whereas humans have only one of this type of peptide.
“Other research in other marsupials has shown that tammar wallabies have eight of these peptides and opossums have 12,” said Peel, adding that studies into koala’s milk had now started.
The scientists artificially created the antimicrobial peptides, called cathelicidins, after extracting the sequence from the devil’s genome, and found they “killed the resistant bacteria… and other bacteria”.
They are hopeful marsupial peptides could eventually be used to develop new antibiotics for humans to aid the battle against superbugs.
“One of the most difficult things in today’s world is to try and find new antibiotics for drug-resistant strains of bacteria,” the research manager of the university’s Australasian Wildlife Genomics Group, Carolyn Hogg, told AFP.
Most of the other previous antibiotics have come from plants, moulds and other work that’s been around for close to a 100 years, so it’s time to start looking elsewhere.
World Health Organisation director-general Margaret Chan warned last month some scientists were describing the impact of superbugs as a “slow-motion tsunami” and the situation was “bad and getting worse”.
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That would go well with my Eva Braun coffee pot.
Only for show…
Heil have a cup please
Reich now?
$199.99 on eBay! That’s a bit reich!
I do nazi the resemblance
Definitely a product of the Nazi Partea
I once saw a pot that looked like Pol.
Love it
A storm in a teacup
Is that the final solution or will there be a redesign?
I asked the shop assistant “Where can I get one of these?” He told me to “head towards the back of the shop and take the third Reich.”
A kettle that looks like Hitler. I don’t see it.
Turn your phone sideways.
It’ll be as clear as day then…
It’s all to do with the handle of the kettle and the knob on the lid, comic hitler.
Should say look at the white background through the handle
Stevie Wonder can see the bloody resemblance!
Too soon Barry, too soon!!
Polar bear, step away from your device and have a look from a distance. It worked for me.
Now it just looks like Hitler laying on his side…
Looks like they’re in a bit of hot water over this…
How the hell did they come to that conclusion ?
Arbeit macht tay.
lets hope the tea party don’t see that kettle!
I’d say the designer got a little giggle when he realised. No better way to sell a few kettles though. You couldn’t buy advertisement like that.
Right, you know Henry Ford,as in Ford motors? Henry was the first non german to be inducted to the nazi party. Anyways, you know Fords car adverts on telly? The slogan “Go Further” ya, if you take out the T ( as in tea,model T ) in further,and swap the R and H around…what do you get?? Spooky shit there man!
Are you stoned?!!
I want one!!!!!
Jeez do people have nothing better to do than complain about a kettle?
They do indeed, Lee. For myself, I have been roaring at my cutlery drawer all morning. Much more worthwhile and less intrusive. That spatula is some bastard, it has to be said.
struggling to see the resemblence
have your say