• Question: Is there an actual way of extracting the proten from a bacteria and using it tokill off bugs such as Anthrax

    Asked by danielm10 to MarkF on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mark Fogg

      Mark Fogg answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Yes there is. I spend most of my time extracting proteins from bacteria.
      Any medicine that kills a bacteria is called an antibiotic, that includes chemicals and proteins. There is an antibiotic that kills anthrax, unfortunately, the symptoms of anthrax infection are very much like flu. Only later symptoms indicate you are infected with anthrax. By that time doctors realise it’s not flu, it can be too late for the antibiotics to do any good. If you know for certain you’ve been exposed to Anthrax though, antibiotics given early are effective at killing it.
      It has very recently been shown that bugs secrete proteins, when they encounter another bug species, that help kill off the competition. I don’t known whether there is one that can damage Anthrax. That is very interesting line of research.

Comments

  • Photo: danielm10

    danielm10 commented on :

    is there a possible theory of detecting Anthrax at an early stage? and is there a vaccination up available to stop it from even getting into our bodies? because vaccinations help out serious diseases such as polio, TB etc.

    • Photo: MarkF

      MarkF commented on :

      I have to emphasis that Anthrax is very, very rare in this country. An African style drum maker/player died from Inhalation Anthrax in 2006 in Scotland after importing drums and animal skins for his drums from Africa. Early this year there was a series of deaths from anthrax, again in Scotland, amongst drug users from contaminated heroin. It is a disease that cannot be passed from person to person. It is caught by inhaling anthrax spores, getting them in a cut on the skin and eating contaminated meat. The inhalation route is probably the worst version to catch. The skin version is easy to spot as you get characteristically black ulcers on your skin. Don’t be worried about catching it 🙂

      The best way of detecting Anthrax early, like any other bacterial infection, is to be aware of where it might be found (places like Africa and India) and what to look for in animals when they’ve got it, so as not to catch it yourself. There are tests that can be carried out on the blood to see if you have been exposed. Early diagnosis still requires suspicion and knowledge that a person has been infected.

      There is a vaccine for Anthrax based on the protein parts that make up the toxin it produces. The vaccine is given to humans (and animals) when a known outbreak occurs, it is 90-95% effective at preventing the disease. The immunity takes many injections to build up compared to, say, Polio or Measles, it does not last for life. The rarity of infection means that there is no need to vaccinate the entire population and these days it usually arrives from outside the UK.

      More sources of information are here (both american)
      http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/anthrax/needtoknow.asp
      http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/tutorials/anthrax/htm/index.htm (this is a very good slide show and talk)