Alligator Blood > Penicillin

It may be the case that the next time you stumble into the doctor's office with the horrid bacterial illness of the season, instead of giving you the extract of a fungus, he'll draw up a dram of bright red alligator blood, and let you wonder what sort of mutant you're doomed to become.

Photo: mooglemoogle on Flickr

It's baffled researched for some time how the scaly beasts can live in swamps and regularly maul one another over territories, but rarely get infected.

While investigating this phenomenon, scientists in Louisiana discovered that the 'gator blood didn't just destroy 23 types of bacteria, including several that resist vaccines, but also reduced the presence of the HIV virus. The magic apparently lies in the peptides within the blood, which abuse the malicious invaders with the proverbial puppy-and-truck ruthlessness.

The research team, based out of Louisiana State University, is presently sequencing the chains in an attempt to be able to synthesize them, and produce some potentially very potent drugs.

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