Current Affairs - Science - Discussion

A new class of antibiotics named "Odilorhabdins" has been discovered which can help in fighting drug-resistant or hard-to-treat bacterial infections. The antibiotic called odilorhabdins, or ODLs, are developed by symbiotic bacteria present in soil-dwelling nematode worms that colonise insects for food. The bacteria helps to kill the insect and secretes the antibiotic to keep competing bacteria away. Researchers from the University of Illinois (UIC) at Chicago and Nosopharm, a France-based biotechnology company, were involved in this study. It has been found that ODLs act on the ribosome of bacterial cells. When ODL is bound to ribosome, it disrupts its ability to interpret and translate genetic code.