A plastic storage crate filled with backyard dirt might have yielded the most powerful antibiotic discovered in decades.
Employing a novel microfluidic device to grow soil bacteria, researchers in Boston and Bonn, Germany, say they have identified a new type of antibiotic that kills the bacteria that cause pneumonia, staph, and blood infections.
The antibiotic, named teixobactin, has yet to be tested in people. But it cured mice of these infections, and it is so different from current antibiotics that the scientists, who reported their findings today in the journal Nature, said they hoped germs might never become resistant to it.
Image: Hard-to-grow bacteria flourish inside this microfluidic device incubated in a pool of dirt. - http://www.technologyreview.com
