Here’s yet another reason to give thanks for turkey on Thanksgiving: A new study has found that turkeys contain the “biological machinery” needed to produce a potentially life-saving antibiotic.
Brigham Young University researchers found a strain of beneficial bacteria — known scientifically as Strain 115 — produces the so-called MP1 antibiotic, which effectively destroys staph infections, strep throat, severe gastrointestinal diseases and roughly half of all infectious bacteria.
Because of its complex structure, the antibiotic, is not in widespread use. But the BYU turkey discovery could change all that.
“Our research group is certainly thankful for turkeys,” said BYU microbiologist Joel Griffitts, whose team is exploring how the turkey-born antibiotic comes to be. “The good bacteria we’re studying has been keeping turkey farms healthy for years and it has the potential to keep humans healthy as well.”
Griffitts and his team found the engine inside of Strain 115 — a compact DNA molecule also known as a plasmid — produces both the killer antibiotic and a self-protecting agent that renders it immune to the antibiotic.
The new study was published in the Journal of Bacteriology.
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