Blue Streak Science Podcast

On This Week’s Show Bacteria living on insects could provide new antibiotics New letters to the DNA alphabet A story of interspecies communication The latest buzz on a new species rediscovered The Climate Lounge Pub Quiz Science News with Nevena Hristozova, and Sophie McManus Bacteria living on insects could provide new antibiotics Nevena Hristozova We’ve heard of the crisis with spreading antibiotic resistant pathogenic bacteria, which can be very very big problem in a very very short time. Until now, for the most part, antibiotics are discovered either by identifying new species producing them, by growing in the lab said species from soil samples and then isolating compounds they produce with antimicrobial properties. The problem with that is, that many bacteria are not easy to grow in the lab, because they only live in complex environments and in microbial communities. This means that the traditional way to stumble across new antibiotics to replace the useless ones due to antimicrobial resistance are be