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| NewsMonday, October 22, 2007 9:42 AM CDT |
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Metagenomics will aid in discovery of new antibiotics
MADISON, Wis. — Seven years ago, Jo Handelsman’s mother died after her body became resistant to the antibiotics that were holding her illness at bay. Today, working in her lab on the University of Wisconsin, hardly a day goes by that Handelsman doesn’t think of her mother’s death and the frustrating and ultimately failed struggle of doctors to find drugs that would keep her alive. Handelsman is a molecular biologist who studies microbes in soil and in other interesting places, such as the stomachs of gypsy moths. Microbes are microscopic life forms, agents of chemical change that drive photosynthesis and, in the human body, help digest food and fight off infection. It is from soil microbes that we have derived most of our antibiotics. As the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor in the Department of Bacteriology, Handelsman heads a laboratory that is pioneering a new way of searching for useful microbes, primarily those that might be commandeered as antibiotics to replace drugs that are fast becoming useless because of the growing resistance of many infectious illnesses. Seven years removed from that difficult year when her mother’s health failed, Handelsman has entered upon a time when the potential for the discovery of new antibiotics is greater than it has ever been. So prevalent and crucial are microbes to life on Earth, Handelsman points out, that without them we would not be able to breathe and plants would not be able to convert light to energy. Trillions of microbes live and work in the human body, 1,000 species alone in the human gut. Handelsman has come up with an approach called metagenomics, which she has applied mostly to soil microbes. Using this technique, Handelsman collects the DNA from an entire community of microbes instead of an individual microbe and then studies the genes looking for their function. Such an approach holds the promise of studying billions more microbes much more efficiently than before. Some say it offers the greatest opportunity, perhaps since the discovery of the microscope, to better understand the natural world. “This is the most exciting time in science I’ve experienced,” said Handelsman. Using metagenomics, scientists can now scan the genes of entire communities of microbes to find out what special functions they perform. It is a much more efficient approach than the old method of culturing, or growing, microbes in the laboratory one at a time. Metagenomics may speed up the discovery of antibiotics, most of which come from soil microbes. This is important because many of our most popular antibiotics are being used so frequently that illnesses are becoming resistant to them. E-mail this story | Print this story | Search archives | RSS Show comments |  Hide comments | Hide comments on all stories |
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