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| It's a bird, it's a plane, no... it's superbug! |
Every year, new flu shots are being created to take out the new and improved influenza viruses that descended from the resistant few who survived the year before. This example of resistance increase in viruses is one of the milder cases. You could see where being resistant to everything could be a problem. Well now there is hope. Scientists recently suggested a possible solution to the problem would be to use
antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) in order to poke holes in the cell membrane, holes that expand until the cell bursts. In order to observe such a small and quick action, however, the scientists had to generate and program their own AMP and get it to bind to a
supported lipid bilayer (SLB) so that they could facilitate when the AMP would bind, therefore allowing the expansion of nanometer-sized pores to be seen and tested. After studying the process of pore expansion in enough detail, it was suggested that when the first AMP binds to the membrane, it triggers a response to other AMPs to start binding to the membrane, causing multiple pore expansions. My question to you is this: What makes AMP so special? Why wouldn't viral resistance come into play again and render AMP useless? This question has a specific answer, but I'd like to see some of your opinions as well.
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It is funny that they turn to an antimicrobial to treat a virus. Why would they turn to an antimicrobial if for bacteria there is a raise in resistance in bacteria? Why not generate a different form of virus to fight off the this virus?
ReplyDeleteI see your point. It does seem like at some point the virus could find ways to avoid the AMPs. It would be great if they could figure out how to put a stop to viruses and bacteria's from becoming resistant.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know what could make AMP so useful for viruses all of a sudden with the way viruses know how to fight off everything. I feel like viral resistance would end up coming into play again over AMPs in a way that the virus is more detrimental to the host after AMP is factored in than before the AMP was introduced to the virus.
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