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Title: Panda blood compound 6x more powerful than current antibiotics
Source:
DV!CE
URL Source: http://dvice.com/archives/2013/01/panda-blood-com.php
Published: Jan 1, 2013
Author: Evan Ackerman
Post Date: 2013-01-01 17:32:58 by A K A Stone
Keywords: None
Views: 2055
Comments: 2
In what could be either very good news or very bad news for our fluffy black and white friends, it's been discovered that panda blood contains an antibiotic compound that's vastly more powerful than anything we've got right now. Researchers at the Life Sciences College of Nanjing Agricultural University in China have extracted a compound called cathelicidin-AM from the blood of giant pandas. Cathelicidin-AM is what's called a gene-encoded antimicrobial peptide, a natural antibiotic that's produced by a panda's immune cells. Testing has shown that cathelicidin-AM can kill even drug resistant strains of bacteria and fungi, and it can do in one hour what conventional antibiotics can barely do in six, without causing nearly as much resistance. Cathelicidin-AM could get turned into a drug, or it could get turned into a surface sanitizier. Either way, the researchers say that they're not done with the panda genome yet, and other secret drugs may be awaiting discovery, like whatever it is that makes pandas have a non-stop craving for bamboo. As far as the pandas themselves go, here's the good news: the fact that panda blood is now useful for humans means that pandas themselves are useful for humans for things besides modeling for WWF logos and stuffed animals, and the hope is that it'll make it easier to keep them from going extinct. And here's the bad news: this stuff comes from the blood of pandas, so getting it out involves stabbing a panda and sucking out some of its juices. My guess is that pandas don't like this very much. It's a good thing that scientists have just about figured out how to synthesize cathelicin-AM, because otherwise, we're in for some very sad pandas.
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#1. To: A K A Stone (#0)
Looks like another species will be going extinct... Once the run of the mill leftard finds out about this they will eventualy kill them all off.. Because they will come up with some hairbrained scheme using their blood to make the next Elixir of Eternal Life... (You guys really should stick to roosting in trees)!!
“We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammunition box.”
Surely the liberal scientists working for those conservative run drug companies will find a way to genetically modifiy another organism such as a bacterium to produce this substance. Or maybe you believe they still create penicillin from moldy bread.
Almost every country in the Middle East is awash in oil, and we have to side with the one that has nothing but joos. Goddamn, that was good thinkin'. Esso posted on 2012-01-13 7:37:56 ET
In what could be either very good news or very bad news for our fluffy black and white friends, it's been discovered that panda blood contains an antibiotic compound that's vastly more powerful than anything we've got right now.
#2. To: CZ82 (#1)
(Edited)
Looks like another species will be going extinct... Once the run of the mill leftard finds out about this they will eventualy kill them all off.. Because they will come up with some hairbrained scheme using their blood to make the next Elixir of Eternal Life... (You guys really should stick to roosting in trees)!!
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