Assembling an antidote to anthrax.Nations that illicitly produce biological weapons often favor spores of anthrax anthrax (ăn`thrăks), acute infectious disease of animals that can be secondarily transmitted to humans. It is caused by a bacterium (Bacillus anthracis to pack the deadly punch. Unfortunately for potential targets, existing anthrax vaccines An´thrax vac´cine 1. (Veter.) A fluid vaccine obtained by growing a bacterium (Bacillus anthracis, formerly Bacterium anthracis) in beef broth. It is used to immunize animals, esp. cattle. and antidotes don't work well, says Jennifer Maynard of the University of Texas at Austin “University of Texas” redirects here. For other system schools, see University of Texas System. The University of Texas at Austin (often referred to as The University of Texas, UT Austin, UT, or Texas . Her team is engineering molecules to fight the bacterium. Maynard started with three antibodies that bind to the anthrax toxin and prevent it from invading cells. Guided by the three-dimensional structure of the toxin, she honed in on the parts of the antibodies that are important to the binding. Next, she plans to change selected amino acids amino acid (əmē`nō), any one of a class of simple organic compounds containing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and in certain cases sulfur. These compounds are the building blocks of proteins. in the proteins and test how well the new versions bind. The team will also thousands of molecules with random amino acid changes to find the ones that best block the toxin. |
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