How to Keep Milk from Spoiling Without Refrigeration

For centuries, before refrigeration, an old Russian practice was to drop a frog into a bucket of milk to keep the milk from spoiling. In modern times, many believed that this was nothing more than an old wives' tale. But researchers at Moscow State University, led by organic chemist Dr. Albert Lebedev, have shown that there could be some benefit to doing this, though of course in the end you'll be drinking milk that a frog was in.

Ice boxes first became available to consumers in the early to mid-19th century and, with that, the ice trade became big business. New England and Norway became major purveyors of ice, but anywhere it was cold, ice was a major export. Usually made out of wood with tin or zinc walls and insulation material like sawdust, cork, or straw, ice boxes were popular until they were rendered obsolete by the electrical refrigerator starting around the 1930s.

Jacob Perkins invented the first version of the refrigerator in 1834 when it was discovered that the hazardous compound ammonia, when liquefied, had a cooling effect. But it wasn't until the late 1920s when Freon was developed by General Motors and DuPont as a "nontoxic" cooling agent, and replaced ammonia, that refrigerators for consumers started to gain traction.

Despite the prevalence of ice in parts of Russia, in certain small rural Russian villages many didn't have access to ice boxes, so they had to find ways to keep things cold and unspoiled. A practice developed, that continued into the 20th century, as described by Dr. Lebedev from memories from his childhood,

[For] small portions of milk to drink, they used to put [a] frog inside… A small frog over there could prevent the milk from being spoiled.

This rather curious practice was an inspiration for a study and, then, a discovery that may lead to a significant new source of antibiotics. In 2010, scientists from United Arab Emirates University made an announcement that the secretions from certain frogs' skins have antibacterial and antifungal properties. Using species native to African countries, they studied the compounds coming from the frogs, which are known as antimicrobial peptides and are a string of amino acids.

After isolating these compounds, they began testing them against various bacterial infections. For example, the dreaded "Iraqibacter," a drug-resistant bacterial infection that has been known to hit wounded soldiers in Iraq could (once again, potentially) be fought with a compound found in the skin of a mink frog that are native to North America. Secretions from a foothill four-legged frog may have the potential to fight the well-known resistant MRSA staph skin infection.

In 2012, scientists from Moscow State University decided to take this a step further by breaking down the compounds and studying the individual peptides. In a study entitled "Composition and Antimicrobial Activity of Skin Peptidome of Russian Brown Frogs" published in the Journal of Proteome Research in November 2012, and using Russian brown frogs (which are edible and considered a delicacy), they extracted secretions by applying electrodes.

What came out was a cocktail of 76 different peptides that all had different properties. Michael Zasloff, now a professor at Georgetown University, but formerly a researcher with the National Institutes of Health said in an interview that, "What is amazing is that no two frogs have the same cocktail. They're all different, and all beautifully tuned to deal with the microbes that these animals face."

As promising as the results are so far, many scientists are skeptical of any real benefit coming from them. For instance, Jun O. Liu, a professor of pharmacology at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, stated in reference to other apparent natural occurring "magic antibiotics," "There are natural substances that work in a lab beautifully but then when you give it to a human it's totally inactive or it's toxic."

While this all may or may not ultimately be medicinally helpful for humans, beginning centuries ago certain Russians seem to have been on to something with putting frogs in milk to delay it spoiling. Although, I think we can all agree that putting a frog in one's milk takes a back seat to the other age-old way to store milk without refrigeration- making it into delicious cheese.

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Bonus Facts:

The world frog population is currently dwindling. For example, the United States amphibian population (which includes frogs, toads, salamanders, and newts) has been declining by 3.7 percent per year of late, according to a U.S. Geological Survey released in May 2013. While the study didn't give firm answers to why this happening, the scientists in the report speculated that possible factors could include climate change, disease, and drought.

"Freon" is the trade name used for a group of chemicals known as chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. Refrigerators and air conditioners were developed to use these chemicals and were sold as consumer products for the home. Today, of course, it has since been discovered that there are irrefutable links to CFCs, Freon, and the depletion of the Ozone layer.

Matt Blitz writes for the wildly popular interesting fact website TodayIFoundOut.com. To subscribe to Today I Found Out's "Daily Knowledge" newsletter, click here or like them on Facebook here. You can also check 'em out on YouTube here.

This post has been republished with permission from TodayIFoundOut.com. Image by Horatiu Curutiu under Creative Commons license.

ORIGINAL: Gizmodo

Matt Blitz

Marine Microbe Produces Unknown Antibiotic

ORIGINAL: Scientific American

Slide culture of a Streptomyces species. Wikipedia

A bacterial species at the California coast was found to produce anthracimycin, which showed activity against anthrax and MRSA in initial, non-human testing. Christopher Intagliata reports.

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Next time you hit the beach, dig your feet into the sand. And consider that your toes might be mingling with the wonder drug of the future: an antibiotic strong enough to combat MRSA, even anthrax. That's what researchers may have found when they dug a few feet into beach sand at Gaviota State Park, near Santa Barbara: a previously undescribed species of Streptomyces bacteria, which pumps out an antibiotic called anthracimycin.

As you might have guessed, the old-school antibiotic streptomycin also comes from a strain of Streptomyces bacteria. But researchers say this newly discovered compound is structurally and chemically unique from that other mycin and from all other antibiotics—meaning it could launch a whole new class of drugs.

Early tests suggest anthracimycin is 25 to 40 times more potent than today's antibiotics at killing anthrax and other germs, in petri dishes at least. And it wiped out MRSA in 90 percent of infected mice. The results appear in the journal Angewandte Chemie. [Kyoung Hwa Jang et al, Anthracimycin, a Potent Anthrax Antibiotic from a Marine-Derived Actinomycete]

There's still no evidence the drug works in humans, and this study’s researchers say they won't be involved in human trials. But they're hoping pharmaceutical investigators won't be resistant to the idea.

—Christopher Intagliata [The above text is a transcript of this podcast]

Potential MRSA Breakthrough and Antibiotic Economics

ORIGINAL: New York Acaddemy of Sciences

By: Tamara Johnson

May 16, 2013

A molecule found in breast milk may re-sensitize MRSA to antibiotics. This could be good news, especially considering the economic disincentives to develop new antibiotics.

Researchers at SUNY University at Buffalo recently published a paper finding that a molecule called HAMLET, purified from breast milk, may re-sensitize antibiotic resistant bacteria to already existing treatments. This is potentially very good news.

Bacteria such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA, or resistant staph) have evolved resistance to almost everything developed to combat infection. Studies place the number of MRSA-related deaths per year in the US at about 19,000. "The reason MRSA exists," says Maryn McKenna (@marynmck), author of the book Superbug: the Fatal Menace of MRSA, "is the failure of previous attempts to treat staph. Methicillin was the first of the class of semi-synthetic penicillins. They were developed in the 1960s because staph became resistant to penicillin just one year after that drug was released to market."

After methicillin came a series of "me too" drugs. These are so similar to methicillin in molecular structure that very slight adaptations were required for MRSA to develop further resistance. A drug called vancomycin was the next step in treatment options. "MRSA's response to that drug was quickly to evolve vancomycin resistant staph. There are two different sets of mutations—one is resistant and one is intermediately resistant. That brings us almost to the end of the available drugs," says McKenna.

So, if HAMLET can re-sensitize bacteria to already available treatments, it could be a literal life-saver. HAMLET is an adjuvant, an agent that modifies the effects of another agent. In this case, the modification increases antibiotic potency, though the exact mechanisms of the synergy are not yet known. It is known that HAMLET binds to hydrogen pumps in the cell membrane that create pH and energy gradients between the inside of a cell and its external environment. Disrupting these pumps interferes with a cell's ability to produce energy and, potentially, to expel antibiotics, but more research is required to understand the biochemistry involved, explains Dr. Hakansson, the Principal Investigator on the paper.

Given MRSA's relentless record of survival adaptations, the question immediately comes to mind: will the bacteria just develop resistance to HAMLET? According to Dr. Hakansson, while this is always a possibility, signs so far are positive. "It's very easy to make antibiotic resistant bacteria strains in the lab. You take a strain that is sensitive to methicillin, for example. Then you add your antibiotic at gradually-increasing concentrations over time and the let the bacteria adapt. We tried really hard to do this with HAMLET and haven't succeeded," he says. Hakansson hypothesizes that this has to do with the hydrogen pump to which HAMLET bonds. The pump is so essential to cell physiology that HAMLET-evasive mutations render the bacteria "extremely unfit."

HAMLET's adjuvant function may prove to be economically advantageous. Despite increasing concerns about resistance to current antibiotics, there isn't much work in the pharmaceutical industry on innovative treatments. Of seven new antibiotics in the pipeline, none utilize novel mechanisms. "There are only a few drugs left and they're not great," says McKenna. "It's a symptom of market failure."

A report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology describes economic disincentives behind the dearth of antimicrobial R&D. The cost of drug development has increased exponentially about every nine years since 1975. Approval for new treatments is far from guaranteed, and resistance development can take an antibiotic out of the market well before a profit can be made. Furthermore, truly new antibiotics are likely to be shelved to be used as "secret weapons" when other options fail. Dr. Hakansson is hopeful that work on HAMLET will be able to avoid, and even help counterbalance, these issues. "An adjuvant is great because you can use it with old antibiotics that are already well-characterized and known to be safe. There might be more of an interest in industry to develop this kind of agent."

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the articles on nyas.org are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Antibiotics and the Meat We Eat

ORIGINAL: NYTimes

By DAVID A. KESSLER 

March 27, 2013 

San Francisco 

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SCIENTISTS at the Food and Drug Administration systematically monitor the meat and poultry sold in supermarkets around the country for the presence of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. These food products are bellwethers that tell us how bad the crisis of antibiotic resistance is getting. And they’re telling us it’s getting worse. 

But this is only part of the story. While the F.D.A. can see what kinds of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are coming out of livestock facilities, the agency doesn’t know enough about the antibiotics that are being fed to these animals. This is a major public health problem, because giving healthy livestock these drugs breeds superbugs that can infect people. We need to know more about the use of antibiotics in the production of our meat and poultry. The results could be a matter of life and death. 

In 2011, drugmakers sold nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics for livestock — the largest amount yet recorded and about 80 percent of all reported antibiotic sales that year. The rest was for human health care. We don’t know much more except that, rather than healing sick animals, these drugs are often fed to animals at low levels to make them grow faster and to suppress diseases that arise because they live in dangerously close quarters on top of one another’s waste. 

It may sound counterintuitive, but feeding antibiotics to livestock at low levels may do the most harm. When he accepted the Nobel Prize in 1945 for his discovery of penicillin, Alexander Fleming warned that “there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to nonlethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.” He probably could not have imagined that, one day, we would be doing this to billions of animals in factorylike facilities. 

The F.D.A. started testing retail meat and poultry for antibiotic-resistant bacteria in 1996, shortly before my term as commissioner ended. The agency’s most recent report on superbugs in our meat, released in February and covering retail purchases in 2011, was 82 pages long and broke down its results by four different kinds of meat and poultry products and dozens of species and strains of bacteria. 

It was not until 2008, however, that Congress required companies to tell the F.D.A. the quantity of antibiotics they sold for use in agriculture. The agency’s latest report, on 2011 sales and also released in February, was just four pages long — including the cover and two pages of boilerplate. There was no information on how these drugs were administered or to which animals and why. 

We have more than enough scientific evidence to justify curbing the rampant use of antibiotics for livestock, yet the food and drug industries are not only fighting proposed legislation to reduce these practices, they also oppose collecting the data. Unfortunately, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, as well as the F.D.A., is aiding and abetting them. 

The Senate committee recently approved the Animal Drug User Fee Act, a bill that would authorize the F.D.A. to collect fees from veterinary-drug makers to finance the agency’s review of their products. Public health experts had urged the committee to require drug companies to provide more detailed antibiotic sales data to the agency. Yet the F.D.A. stood by silently as the committee declined to act, rejecting a modest proposal from Senators Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, both Democrats, that required the agency to report data it already collects but does not disclose. 

In the House, Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Louise M. Slaughter of New York, also Democrats, have introduced a more comprehensive measure. It would not only authorize the F.D.A. to collect more detailed data from drug companies, but would also require food producers to disclose how often they fed antibiotics to animals at low levels to make them grow faster and to offset poor conditions. 

This information would be particularly valuable to the F.D.A., which asked drug makers last April to voluntarily stop selling antibiotics for these purposes. The agency has said it would mandate such action if those practices persisted, but it has no data to determine whether the voluntary policy is working. The House bill would remedy this situation, though there are no Republican sponsors. 

Combating resistance requires monitoring both the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in our food, as well as the use of antibiotics on livestock. In human medicine, hospitals increasingly track resistance rates and antibiotic prescription rates to understand how the use of these drugs affects resistance. We need to cover both sides of this equation in agriculture, too. 

I appreciate that not every lawmaker is as convinced as I am that feeding low-dose antibiotics to animals is a recipe for disaster. But most, if not all of them, recognize that we are facing an antibiotic resistance crisis, as evidenced by last year’s bipartisan passage of a measure aimed at fighting superbugs by stimulating the development of new antibiotics that treat serious infections. Why are lawmakers so reluctant to find out how 80 percent of our antibiotics are used? 

We cannot avoid tough questions because we’re afraid of the answers. Lawmakers must let the public know how the drugs they need to stay well are being used to produce cheaper meat. 

David A. Kessler was commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 1990 to 1997. 

The Rise of Superbugs Called 'Apocalyptic Scenario'

ORIGINAL: LiveScience

Marc Lallanilla, Life's Little Mysteries Assistant Editor

Date: 25 January 2013 Time: 09:17 AM ET

Staphylococcus aureus is just one of many antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" that have health officials alarmed. CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons

A prominent British health official has declared the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs so grave a threat that the world is now facing an "apocalyptic scenario" in which people die of routine infections.

Dame Sally Davies, the U.K.'s chief medical officer (a role equivalent to the U.S. surgeon general), warned Parliament that contagious antibiotic-resistant disease is an imminent crisis and should be included on the government's official register of possible national emergencies, right next to terrorist attacks and natural disasters, according to the Guardian.

Superbugs are disease-causing bacteria that have evolved to have defenses against antibiotic drugs. Over the years, some strains of bacteria have become so robust they resist almost every weapon in our drug armamentarium.

"There are few public health issues of potentially greater importance for society than antibiotic resistance," Davies told the Guardian. And she pulled no punches when speaking to Parliament: "We need to get our act together in this country," the Guardian quoted her as saying.

Davies is hardly the first to sound the alarm on the spread of antibiotic-resistant infections. "It certainly would — and has — resulted in a much greater risk of dying of infection," Dr. Brad Spellberg, assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, told LiveScience. [5 Ways Computers Boost Drug Discovery]

"We already are seeing infections that are untreatable," Spellberg said. Besides the rising threats of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis and gonorrhea, he cited three bacterial infections of particular concern: Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa andKlebsiella pneumonia.

Each of these bacteria can cause a number of infectious diseases, including pneumonia, septicemia and urinary tract infections. In the case of Klebsiella, Spellberg noted, there's just one highly toxic drug left, and it's effective only about half the time it's used.

It's equally alarming that antibiotic drug development is at a virtual standstill, he said. "The pipeline is barren," partly because pharmaceutical companies have few incentives for developing antibiotics that people take for just a few days or weeks, Spellberg said.

Instead, drugmakers focus on research into drugs that are taken for years to treat chronic conditions like arthritis or heart disease. Davies told Parliament, "There is a broken market model for making new antibiotics."

While Spellberg is careful to add some perspective to the issue – "I don't think we should be alarmist" – he emphasizes that a "massive crisis" is looming if we leave unaddressed the continued rise in antibiotic-resistant superbugs, since it could result in a "catastrophic drop in quality of life."

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

Old Ocean Mold

ORIGINAL: The Scientist

By Beth Marie Mole

December 12, 2012

Fungi in 100 million year-old seafloor sediments could possess novel antibiotics.

microscopic image of Penicillium sp.Wikimedia, Y_tambe

Digging 127 meters below the Pacific Ocean floor, into 100 million year-old sediments, researchers have discovered flourishing fungi, including some that belong to the genus Penicillium—the source of penicillin. The discovery, reported last week (December 6) at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California, provides hope of finding novel antibiotics deep below the ocean, as well as understanding how life can thrive in such a nutrient-poor environment.

“[The study] extends what we understand about the limits of life on the planet,” molecular geo­microbiologist Heath Mills of the Texas A&M University in College Station, who studied the fungi, told Nature. Moreover, “this is adding a new family of potential drugs,” added biogeochemist Brandi Reese, of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who collaborated with Mills on the study.

The researchers isolated the fungi from sediments collected on a South Pacific drilling expedition in 2010. Back in the lab, they found genetic sequences from at least eight groups of fungi, and were able to grow four fungi from the sediments.

Mills and Reese hypothesize that the fungi may play critical roles in the deep-sea sediment ecosystems, such as deconstructing organic matter in the ancient sediment for other organisms to use. Moreover, the remote fungi may have evolved unique biological weapons—antibiotics—to defeat competing microbes in its unique environment. “What if this is a new version of penicillin?” Mills posed to Nature—one that may be effective against pathogens that have grown resistant to traditional antibiotics “That’s one of the benefits of going to the deep biosphere.”