- Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science(IISc),Bangalore have designed an antimicrobial protein called Omega 76.
- This protein promises to kill multidrug-resistant bacterium called Acinetobacter baumannii.
- The bacterium is among those responsible for most of the infections in hospitals and other healthcare settings and is fast becoming resistant to available antibiotics.
- The protein was developed using bioinformatics approach.Experiments have shown that it killed the bacterium by breaking down its cell membrane.
- Usually,conventional drugs act by blocking specific pathways or processes in bacterial cells but bacteria evolve to gain resistance against such drugs.
- In recent times,a class of chemical molecules called antimicrobial peptides has emerged as an alternative.They promise to kill bacteria by breaking down their membranes.The new molecule belongs to this group.
- Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data.Bioinformatics has been used for analyses of biological queries using mathematical and statistical techniques.
