Activist Post: A new kind of antibiotic has been developed by researchers at Oregon State University. The new antibiotics are called PPMOs, which stand for peptide-conjugated phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomers. They are “a synthetic analog of DNA or RNA that has the ability to silence the expression of specific genes.” The way that PPMO antibiotics will work is to, “specifically target the underlying genes of a bacterium.” In plain English, PPMOs will genetically modify bacteria. This may not sound like a horrible thing on initial glance. Bacteria are generally thought of as evil (soap commercials have conditioned us all), something to fight because some bacteria can make people sick and even kill them if their body is overwhelmed by “bad” bacteria. However, bacteria and the other single-celled organisms that make up the human microbiome are intimate parts of each human being.
Per the Human Microbiome Project:
The healthy adult body hosts ten times as many microbial cells as human cells, including bacteria, archaea, viruses, and eukaryotic microbes resident on nearly every body surface. The metagenome carried collectively by these microbial communities dwarfs the human genome in size, and their influences on normal development, diet and obesity, immunity, and disease are under active research.
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