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Tuesday, February 11, 2003The scientists found 17 genes that make yeast slow or stop growing when exposed to gentamicin. This cheap and powerful antibiotic is used to treat skin, eye, and ear infections and bacterial meningitis. In 5- 10% of patients it can damage the kidneys and inner ear. "Understanding how gentamicin does its damage would be very important in figuring out how to avoid this toxicity," says Timothy Hain, a neurologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The screen also identified four genes that make yeast sensitive to tetracycline and oxytetracycline, which are antibiotics used to treat Lyme disease, pneumonia, acne, bladder infections and ulcers. Figuring out how to prevent antibiotic toxicity in patients based on the molecules identified here will be a much more daunting task, however. They haven't been able to find any analogous yeast genes for commonly used antibiotics, however: The sift did not reveal any deletions that make cells susceptible to amoxicillin, penicillin, rifampin or vancomycin, which are used to treat bacterial infections of the airways, stomach and skin. This could be due to differences in the way in which human and yeast cells take up antibiotics, says Avery. He admits that the screen probably missed some gene functions that are specific to humans. Needs a lot more work, but it could lead to more useful applications. posted by Sydney on 2/11/2003 07:50:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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