Frogs Could Provide Big Leap in Antibiotics

[DogPawsBiscuitsNGrav]

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Steve Baragona
Voice of America
January 02, 2013

A bit of old Russian folk wisdom could produce a crop of new antibiotics.

With drug-resistant bacteria a growing public health threat worldwide, a type of frog Russians have used to keep milk fresh could provide a fresh source of germ fighters.

Moscow State University chemist Albert Lebedev grew up in a rural part of Russia, where many people kept their own cows. In the days before refrigeration, it was a challenge to keep milk from spoiling.

So people enlisted the help of the local amphibians.

“[For] small portions of milk to drink, they used to put [a] frog inside," he says. "A small frog over there could prevent the milk from being spoiled.”

It turns out that putting a frog in your milk is not as crazy as it might sound.

Frog surgery

To explain, let’s go back about 25 years, to another surprising discovery about amphibians.

The eggs of African horned frogs are a popular tool for scientists studying the innermost workings of cells. In the late 1980s, Michael Zasloff was surgically

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[hollysmom]

1. If only we could stop killing them off.