Studying Traditional Lore for new Antibiotics

Ferris Jabr writing in the New York Times Magazine reports that traditional treatments for human ailments may provide clues in the search for new antibiotics.  The emergence of anti-biotic resistant strains of bacteria increasingly threatens our ability to treat infection.  New antibiotics are desperately needed.  Jabr reports past research has focussed on examining soil bacteria for species that produce natural products useful as anti-biotics.  The possibility that plants might produce species with useful anti-biotics has been less explored.  Yet thousands of years of experience reflected in traditional oral and written sources provides clues as to what plants may have useful properties.  Pursuing these clues is the business of the ethnobiologist who is both a cultural anthropologist and a molecular biologist. Studies in this are have provided promising leads on a number of possible anti-biotics including some with new and unique modes of action.  Some of these species, for example, prevent the formation of deadly assemblies of microbes known as plaques.  This is potentially as effective as killing the microbe in treating disease, and yet is not likely to lead to the development of resistant strains of the organism.

Brazillian Peppertree which is being studied for anti-biotic potential