Alligator Blood May Lead to Powerful, New Antibiotics

Alligators are vicious animals who fight over their territories and mates on a daily basis. In the process, they become wounded, but their wounds never get infected. Scientists have been pondering about this for years and now they finally have the answer.

Researchers believe that the secret lies in the alligator's blood. Chemists in Louisiana have found that blood from the American alligator can destroy 23 different types of bacteria, including the strains which are resistant to today's antibiotics. In addition to destroying these bacteria, the blood was able to deplete and destroy significant amounts of HIV. Study co-author Lancia Darville at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge says that peptides - fragments of proteins - within the reptile's blood help them fight off deadly infections. Same peptides are found in the skins of toads and frogs as well as Komodo dragons and crocodiles. The scientists believe that these peptides could one day lead to medicines that would provide humans with the same, maybe even better, antibiotic protection.

"We are in the process of separating and identifying the specific peptides in alligator blood," said Darville, who presented the findings on Sunday at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans. "Once we sequence these peptides, we can obtain their chemical structure to potentially [create new] drugs."

Alligator Cream Mark Merchant, a study co-author and a biochemist at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, was the first one to notice the alligators' unusual resistance. He was interested to find out how come, despite the fact that alligators gain so many scratches and bruises, they rarely developed fatal infections. He then developed human and alligator serum and exposed each of them to 23 different strains of bacteria. Of course each of these serums were protein-rich blood plasma that had its clotting agents removed. When he observed the results, he noticed that the human serum destroyed only eight strains of bacteria but the alligator serum killed all 23 of them. Then, when alligator serum was exposed to HIV, he saw that a good amount of it was destroyed. The study team believes that pills and creams containing alligator peptides could be available in pharmacies in seven to ten years. Such products would be exceptional in prevention of infections, such as in patients with diabetes (foot ulcers), burn victims, as well as people suffering from auto-immune diseases. However, there are a couple of drawbacks right now that need to be resolved before these creams become available. For example, it has been found that higher concentrations of the alligator serum tend to be toxic to human cells. Not So Primitive Adam Britton, a biologist in northern Australia, has found crocodillins in the blood of crocodiles, which are antimicrobial proteins. These peptides are part of animals' innate immune systems, which basically provide automatic protection from certain diseases. Humans, on the other hand, gain peptides as they grow, meaning they are adaptive. People gain resistance to many diseases after exposure to them.

Innate immunities "usually serve to amplify the adaptive immune system, often by weakening the membranes of bacteria," he said. "It appears that alligator and crocodile antimicrobial peptides are extremely effective agents" against bacteria, he added.

He also said that it is important to find out what these proteins mean to immune system in general. If we are able to harness this secret, we would be on the verge of major advance in medicine. Thus, it may be the case that the next time you end up in the doctor's office suffering from a deadly bacterial illness, instead of giving you the fungal extraction, he will give you a small amount of red alligator blood.