Slime Mold Maps Roman Roads

Okay. I have officially heard it all. Microbiology and archaeology combine to retrace lost Roman roads. 

What?! 

I know. I was skeptical too. Well, here's basically how it works/tracks back to Roman times. Molds want to find food via the shortest path between points A and B. So, they meander (slime along) until they get to the food (a flake of oatmeal). The odd thing is that when food was placed in roughly the places (on agar in a petri dish) as 17 towns and major cities of the ancient Roman empire, the slime mold traveled the same route as the Roman roads. Researchers found this to be true of known (and still used) roads as well as military roads only described in ancient travel texts. Interesting! So next time I need directions, I might try a trusty slime mold. It would take days, but all for the advancement of science, I say! 

New Antibiotic from Soil Bacteria

Just when parents are busy keeping toddlers out of the dirt, scientists find a previously unknown soil bacteria that makes a powerful Gram-positive bacteria-targeting antibiotic. It turns out that it kills bad players like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Wahoo! Staph was definitely getting out of hand so this is good news!

The new bacterium, called teixobactin, lives in the soil and can't be grown in the lab using common methods. However researchers, Lewis and Slava Epstein, came up with an innovative technique where a soil sample is diluted with agar and suspended in a chamber surrounded by a semi-permeable membrane. Their results were published on January 7th in Nature.

This unique growth method allows the bacterium to grown more like it does in nature and allows a level of biodiversity that is missing in current culture methods. The antibiotic has not yet been proven to kill bacterial infection in humans, but assuming it works after more testing, “a drug like this must be reserved for serious diseases and not given to general practitioners to spread around like aspirin." 

“The rate of evolution of large-scale resistance will depend on the dosage and frequency of [the antibiotic’s use],” added Princeton microbiologist Julia Bos.

So with quiet optimism things are looking up in the fight against infection...if we are careful. Go science!