Scientists Search for New Ways to Treat Infection

October 19, 2012

Researchers say anti-bacterial protein PlyC could be effective antibiotic alternative

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I’m Christopher Cruise.

And I’m Jim Tedder. Today, we report on the search for new ways to treat infections. We tell how researchers used DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, to study the roots of the English language. And we tell about an experiment that shows you can learn while you sleep.

In nineteen twenty-eight, a British scientist made a chance observation. He found that some mold had grown in bacteria in a culture plate in his laboratory. Molds can do that. But this mold that had somehow gotten into the plate had the ability to kill the bacteria around it.

The scientist, Alexander Fleming, found that the mold was a member of a common group known as Penicillium. Fleming and two other scientists, Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey, went on to win the Nobel Prize in nineteen forty-five. They were honored "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases."

Other powerful antibiotics have been discovered since penicillin. But many antibiotics have become less effective as the germs they are designed to kill develop resistance.

​​So scientists are searching for new ways to treat infections. Recently, researchers in Australia said they made an important discovery. Scientists at Monash University in Melbourne believe an antibacterial viral protein called PlyC could be used as an alternative to antibiotics.