
In a Dragon’s Blood, Scientists Discover a Potential Antibiotic - dnetesn
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/health/komodo-dragon-blood-antibiotics.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0
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car
More then 5000 antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been discovered to date, the
first one (gramicidin) back in 1939.

This review article provides a good overview of different AMPs and the history
of their discovery:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3873676/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3873676/)

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djrogers
I sincerely hope they are able to synthesize this, and that the synthetic
doesn't lose any effectiveness over the natural compound. It sounds like an
amazing breakthrough if it works out, as it's much more than a garden-variety
antibiotic. FTA:

"It punched holes in the outer membranes of both gram-negative and gram-
positive bacteria, it dissolved the biofilms that glue bacteria together, and
it sped skin healing."

Getting through the cell walls of gram-negative bacteria alone would make this
worth investigating, but the other two added to it are like icing on the life-
saving cake.

~~~
folli
Not to take anything away from the accomplishment (we definitely need more
research on antibiotics), but the wound healing experiment is IMO just sloppy:
they compared a infected wound treated using the peptide to an untreated
wound. I could imagine that even a basic wound desinfection using rubbing
alcohol will have comparative results to this peptide.

~~~
mabbo
Depends what question you're trying to answer.

If the question is "Is this the greatest antibiotic ever", well, sure you'll
want to compare it against a slew of other compounds. But if your question is
"does this increase the speed of healing at all?" as a first test before
later, more complex experiments, then this seems fine to me.

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jfarlow
The peptide of interest has been named 'DRGN1' [1]. The actual full length
DRG1 amino acid sequence of DRGN1 if you want to use it: PSKKTKPVKPKKVA

As a genetically encoded peptide it has a few advantages over the traditional
small molecule antibiotics you might know about from being prescribed by your
doctor:

\- It retains anti-biotic effect on gram-negative (hard to attack because they
have a secondary wall) bacteria.

\- It's mechanism of action is less well understood, but because it's not
obviously just a 'signal jammer' than a small molecule antibiotic, developing
resistance to anti-microbial peptides seems more difficult than with small
molecules.

\- It has anti-biofilm properties as well as well as anti-biotic properties
(biofilms are a royal pain in hospitals - think catheters...)

\- Anti-microbial peptides also often have a strange effect where they
activate wound _healing_ in non-microbes (people), rather than just being an
ineffectively diluted poison or entirely benign (the way most small molecule
antibiotics are).

\- My favorite though, because it is genetically encodable, the anti-microbial
properties can be conferred to other genetically encoded
tools/machines/proteins. If you fuse the amino acid sequence to another
protein's sequence, the new fusion protein will likely also have anti-
microbial properties.

Spider silk gloves could have this peptide woven into them - and the R&D cost
to at least try it out is likely a few hundred bucks and a day or two of
effort, CRISPR could deliver a sequence that produces this peptide, or a
protein that contained this peptide. The peptide could be produced at
commercial scale attached to another 'filler protein' to coat stents/catheters
to prevent biofilm buildup - adding exactly zero production cost if such a
filler protein is already being used. Or fused to a protein that other 'good'
bacteria already produce to prevent biofilm formation where it shouldn't be.
Because it can be encodedly produced by nearly all life, it can be introduced
genetically as a one-time cost/effort, letting the organism then produce the
antibiotic, rather than having to mass-produce the antibiotic in some chemical
reaction.

[0] The paper:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41522-017-0017-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41522-017-0017-2)

[1] DRG1:
[https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/drgn1/](https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/drgn1/)

~~~
mkehrt
Does the fact that it's a peptide mean it won't survive digestion and can't be
taken orally?

~~~
marcosdumay
On a silver lining, this may mean that people won't give this thing to cattle
and it won't accumulate on the wild. That may delay bacteria resistance.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Don't farmers ever _inject_ stuff into cattle?

~~~
marcosdumay
It's more expensive. Farmers avoid injecting things in healthy cattle.

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amelius
There's always the problem of antibiotic resistance. With the current trend of
personal medicine, we might as well switch to bacteriophages [1]. In Georgia
and Russia, people have been using the technique for decades.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy)

~~~
dcdanko
Phage would be useful but bacteria are likely to be able to resist engineered
phage as well.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23819105](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23819105)

~~~
wikibob
The abstract states the opposite of the parent. It says that while bacteria
develop resistance in the lab to phases that co-evolve, it is unlikely to be a
problem in the real world.

>Bacteriophage therapy, the use of viruses that infect bacteria as
antimicrobials, has been championed as a promising alternative to conventional
antibiotics. Although in the laboratory bacterial resistance against phages
arises rapidly, resistance so far has been an only minor problem for the
effectiveness of phage therapy. Resistance to antibiotics, however, has become
a major issue after decades of extensive use. Should we expect similar
problems after long-term use of phages as antimicrobials? Like antibiotics,
phages are often noted to be drivers of bacterial evolution. Should we expect
phage-treated pathogens to develop a general resistance to phages over time, a
resistance against which only, for example, hypothetically co-evolved phages
might be infective? _Here we argue that the global infection patterns of
phages suggest that this is not necessarily a concern as environmental phages
often can infect bacteria with which those phages lack any recent co-
evolutionary history._

------
RangerScience
You know, in hindsight, _of course_ Komodo Dragons would have neat
antibacterial techniques.

Interesting to learn that the "bite and sepsis" theory was debunked-ish years
ago.

Also interesting to learn that they're hard to study? It surprises me that
such a well-known species is still that opaque, and the article gives some
hints as to why.

~~~
jfarlow
Curiously the peptide is derived from a histone protein. Histones are the
'spools' around which genomic DNA is wrapped. Histones are found in the
nucleus inside dragon cells. There probably should be no bacteria there even
under really bad infection conditions unless the cell itself is being totally
destroyed. It's not immediately obvious to me why a histone would have such
antibacterial properties. But it's almost certainly not the obvious "bite and
sepsis" theory, as you state. I'm not sure it is an 'of course' here - rather
it might actually be a lucky find while playing with the truly cool sounding
'dragon's blood'.

edit: Huh - after getting curious it looks like the above is precisely my
'incongruent expectation'. From this article in 2001 about antimicrobial
histone peptides found in salmon [1]:

"Most antimicrobial activity is an extracellular event or occurs in the
cellular lysosomal compartment. Therefore, an in vivo antimicrobial role for
salmon histone H1 might seem incongruent with this protein’s assumed nuclear
location and nucleosomal role. In mammals, however, histone H1 has been found
outside the nucleus. It is present in the cytosol of human intestinal villus
cells, from which it is released into the intestinal lumen during normal cell
sloughing. Histone H1 is also found on the surfaces of murine macrophages
where it serves as a receptor for thyroglobulin and it is a cell surface
protein in murine neurons and in human monocytes. Therefore, histone H1 is not
limited to the nucleus in all cells and it may be released to locations where
it can act as an extracellular antimicrobial agent. Moreover, an antimicrobial
role has been proposed for histone H1."

[1] (2001)
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X01...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X0195020X?via%3Dihub)

~~~
pazimzadeh
Interesting! Neutrophils can actually release their chromatin to engage
bacteria through NETosis, so histone proteins having antibacterial activity
does make some sense.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3439169/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3439169/)

------
EGreg
_Wild dragons might have even more defenses against infection, but the
researchers said they were unlikely to find out.

“I wouldn’t turn down wild dragon blood if it was sent to me and I thought it
was collected ethically,” Dr. Bishop said. “But I’m not going to go out in the
wild to try to get it.”_

Why the different attitude towards mice and guinea pigs?

~~~
dcdanko
Komodo dragons have a relatively small population which researchers wouldn't
want to disrupt on a large scale.

Not that researchers collect their mice from the wild...

~~~
Digit-Al
Also, they're a protected species which is fairly large and aggressive - so
getting a sample without causing any harm to the animal would involve a
certain amount of risk of getting significant chunks of tender flesh torn from
one's body.

------
somberi
A related coverage of the same story by The Economist.
[http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/2171780...](http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/21717808-komodo-dragons-could-be-source-new-generation-
antibiotics-48-uses)

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mrfusion
Turns out the idea of Komodo dragons having extra bacteria in their mouths is
a myth.

[http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/27/the-
myth-...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/27/the-myth-of-the-
komodo-dragons-dirty-mouth/)

------
RichardHeart
As animals go extinct, we lose the opportunity to borrow great ideas from
their biology.

~~~
gutnor
That is the annoying thing about all those "Save the planets" pitch of the
green and sustainable measure. Short of nuking everything, nature will be fine
a few thousands years after humanity is forgotten. That should really be "Save
humanity".

Disappearing ecosystem threaten directly humanity: food, water, even climate.

That's just the tip of the iceberg though. A lot of innovation are still
coming from nature. We rely on solution already found by millions of years of
evolution to solve our problem. Short of AI singularity, there is no
substitute.

------
JohnJamesRambo
The fact that it doesn't work in broth and only works in low salt phosphate
buffer conditions is a big red flag in my opinion.

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exhilaration
Very nice: a justifiable clickbaity headline.

~~~
Raphmedia
It was either Komodo Dragons or Bearded Dragons. Not clickbaity at all for a
reptile lover. :)

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spraak
Reminds me of the other HN front page article about bleeding crabs. They lost
to think you can steal animal blood and get away with the karma.

~~~
spraak
If that sounds too spiritual to you, consider even Newton's 3rd law, "For
every action there is an opposite and equal reaction". Humans are swiftly
bringing their own demise in the name technological advancement.

