Accelerating the race against antibiotic resistance

AlphaFold unlocks a decade of knowledge inside minutes that may assist beat antibiotic resistance

Most individuals who’ve entry to a contemporary healthcare system wouldn’t take into account a illness like bubonic plague to be a risk. Such bacterial infections are normally handled simply by fashionable antibiotics. But antibiotic resistance, the place micro organism evolve the power to defeat these medication, is rapidly changing into a worldwide drawback. With new antibiotics skinny on the bottom, scientists like Marcelo Sousa and Megan Mitchell on the College of Colorado Boulder are a unique method: concentrating on the resistance mechanism itself.

Blocking the resistance mechanism, which is managed by enzymes, ought to permit current antibiotics to proceed to operate. However understanding the construction of those enzymes has confirmed extremely difficult with purely experimental strategies – till the workforce got here throughout AlphaFold. Within the video above, Marcelo and Megan clarify the way it felt to instantly unlock the potential of these knowledge, and what this might imply for antibiotic resistance.

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