• Question: do you find new antibiotics

    Asked by anon-186825 to Danny on 13 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Danny Ward

      Danny Ward answered on 13 Nov 2018:


      Yes, antibiotic discovery is a big part of our research. In our department, we go antibiotic “mining”. Lots of micro-organisms produce antibiotics under the right conditions as its a natural defence mechanism for them. We need to find out what those conditions are to help turn the antibiotic production on. We do this by looking and understanding the organisms genetic information which acts kind of like an instruction book, we can predict which bits tell the organism when and how to make antibiotics 🔬.
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      Once we get an organism producing an antibiotic. We harvest it using lots of chemistry then test it out to see if its safe and effective. Usually we do this in petri dishes and using computer modelling software 💻

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