Nanotechnology boosts war on superbugs

Nature Nanotechnology journal recently had an article about how scientists from the London Centre for Nanotechnology are using nanomechanical cantilever arrays to study how vancomycin can combat increasingly antibiotic resistant bacteria such as MRSA. In this day and age, there is a real danger from infections that are becoming more resistant to antibiotics. Dr McKendry, Joseph Ndieyira, Moyu Watari are using tiny levers no wider than a human hair to study the binding process that takes place when vancomycin binds to MRSA. The 'superbugs' are resistant to antibiotics because there is a mutation that deletes a single hydrogen bond from the structure of the MRSA. This makes it 1,000 times more difficult for the antibiotic to bind to the bug's cell wall and disrupt the cell wall. The weakening of the cell wall is what ultimately kills the bacteria.
I found this article interesting because it seems that nanotechnology is the new frontier when it comes to medicine and physiology. This article gave me more inspiration for our group projects because we are essentially doing what real scientists are doing at a much more theoretical and simpler level.

http://www.physorg.com/news143036673.html

-------Ricardo Raul Arteaga