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OfflinePTreeDish
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Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic
    #26500132 - 02/23/20 03:55 PM (3 years, 11 months ago)

If an amateur were to find a substance that exhibits antibiotic properties on agar using a documented repeatable process, what would be the next course of action in sharing the observation with the scientific community and furthering the research?


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Offlineendlessnessagain
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: PTreeDish] * 2
    #26500994 - 02/24/20 07:08 AM (3 years, 11 months ago)

Why not just post here and wait for people to duplicate your results?


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Offlinepsilly the kid
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: endlessnessagain]
    #26501014 - 02/24/20 07:29 AM (3 years, 11 months ago)

:whathesaid:


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OfflinePTreeDish
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: endlessnessagain]
    #26502428 - 02/24/20 11:00 PM (3 years, 11 months ago)

I suppose that could work. My question was hypothetical.

Once I realized that it is entirely feasible to test a random sample for antibiotic properties from home, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the opportunity that poses to the amateur mycology community.

I've been trying to find out where to be invest my time in aiding antibiotic research. In the way the amateur astronomy community contributes to the sciences, I believe the amateur mycology community could really help make some headway towards addressing the issue of increasing rates of drug-resistant infection and the scarcity of novel antibiotics making it to market.

There must be some way the amateur community can help. Is it having all of us go out and start testing a bunch of random samples? What is the way we can help. That's what I'm consumed with.

There are some youtubers who show you how you can test for new antibiotics from home using agar. But they never talk about what to do after you have the results of the experiment.

MIT is using machine learning to predict which molecules have antibiotic properties. For software like this to work, it needs to be fed a steady input of new molecules to analyze.

The way I figure it, if I can create an assembly line where I test 2 cultures per week * 50 weeks, that's 100 experiments. 100 pieces of data. Certainly that data could be useful in some way? What if I take a sample that could be replicated and shown to have antibiotic properties?

If I find a blade of grass that has antibiotic properties, what do I do with that information? How do I know if someone hasn't already looked at blades of grass. What if my blade of grass is different?

Or maybe the whole antibiotic market incentive structure is the main problem and that can only be fixed with regulation... so my energy would be better spent on supporting regulatory policy change.


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InvisiblebodhisattaMDiscordReddit
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: PTreeDish] * 1
    #26502579 - 02/25/20 04:49 AM (3 years, 11 months ago)

Children across the globe do this experiment in 5th grade. Some kids use gum or mints. Some kids may try grass. paper, pencil shavings
toenail clippings, essential oils, hand sanitizer, hot sauce, carolina reaper, pepper spray, plant leaves, pine cone, pine needles, sap, Etc...

You do nothing with the info. Science has already investigated anything you'll try. If you really think you have something novel and interesting go talk to a college biology teacher so they can set you straight. Besides antibiotics are nearly useless if you're a cultivator and slightly more useful if you're a field mycologist.

Any antibiotics you find like commercial antibiotics are not effective against everything anyway.


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OfflinePTreeDish
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: bodhisatta] * 1
    #26503360 - 02/25/20 03:03 PM (3 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

bodhisatta said:
Children across the globe do this experiment in 5th grade. Some kids use gum or mints. Some kids may try grass. paper, pencil shavings
toenail clippings, essential oils, hand sanitizer, hot sauce, carolina reaper, pepper spray, plant leaves, pine cone, pine needles, sap, Etc...

You do nothing with the info. Science has already investigated anything you'll try. If you really think you have something novel and interesting go talk to a college biology teacher so they can set you straight. Besides antibiotics are nearly useless if you're a cultivator and slightly more useful if you're a field mycologist.

Any antibiotics you find like commercial antibiotics are not effective against everything anyway.




Your response is very much appreciated. However, I must respectfully disagree. In particular:

Quote:

You do nothing with the info. Science has already investigated anything you'll try.




That you would say this saddens me, because it means you have no belief or hope in the amateur community to offer up any meaningful contribution to the sciences. This is not something I would expect from a trusted cultivator of the very organism that continues to reveal incredible benefits to mankind.

I refuse to believe that "Science" has already investigated anything we could try. How could you possibly come to that conclusion? I don't have to tell you that new fungal sp are being discovered all the time, even by amateurs. The same goes for molecules that haven't yet been explored for antibiotic properties. How do you know your back yard doesn't have a micro-environment in which a new antibiotic compound has emerged?

Should amateur astronomers stop watching the skies? Why not since "Science" is presumably looking anything you and I might look at?

I'm asking what can the amateur mycology community offer up to the understanding and exploration of advancement of new antibiotic discovery. With all due respect, that there is nothing we can do is not an acceptable answer for me.


Edited by PTreeDish (02/25/20 03:04 PM)


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Offlinewinemaker
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: PTreeDish]
    #26540930 - 03/17/20 02:33 PM (3 years, 10 months ago)

1) Contact colleges that specialize in the field. E.g. I would call Notre Dame (https://www.notredamecollege.edu/) and find out if my findings have already been researched, if they were interested in funding the experiment, etc.

2) https://experiment.com/

3) Finding anyone who would be interested in the research.

Think about your goal. Think if you want to produce it yourself, market it, just share the info, etc. If you just want to dish out information for free, you could just search a web browser for "antibiotic research" or w/e and post it where you want.

Hope this helps!


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OfflinePTreeDish
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: winemaker]
    #26541120 - 03/17/20 04:22 PM (3 years, 10 months ago)

I've learned a ton since asking this question, but your response was still thoughtful and much appreciated kind stranger.

For those curious:

* Discovery of a new antibiotic is highly unlikely to be discovered in my general environment, killing my plan to create an at-home antibiotic testing assembly line using cultures I pick up from wherever until I stumble on something.

Originally, this question was designed to answer, "if I culture something with antibiotic properties, how do I know if a. it hasn't already been studied and b. is worth sharing to for further study and possible investment into developing it into a new treatment.

Most antibiotic-resistant microbes have already been explored in typical environments and this is why researchers are currently looking for new antibiotics in extreme environments (volcanoes, underwater vents, etc) and in largely unexplored highly-diverse ecosystems such as rain-forests.

* A lot of antibiotic research has shifted to analyzing huge volumes of published genomes in search of a protein that exhibits antibiotic properties and could be synthesized at scale. This is more cost effective and efficient than running an antibiotic assay against random cultures picked up in the wild.

* The scientific community is reluctant to bring a new antibiotic to the market until absolutely necessary due to the fact that as soon as the antibiotic becomes widely used, resistance will immediately begin to develop and new treatments are hard to find.

* Big Pharma has little incentive to invest in antibiotic research and discovery due to the incredible investment required to see the, often decade, long FDA process of bringing a new drug to market. In addition, antibiotics aren't as profitable since they are typically taken a single round of treatment when an illness occurs, unlike medication for chronic conditions that keep patients ordering more of the drug.

If anyone else is interested in working on the antibiotic problem or has any additional thoughts, I'd love to hear them.


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OfflineDdaShroom
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: PTreeDish]
    #26552204 - 03/23/20 01:21 AM (3 years, 10 months ago)

This is just so mind-opening to me because, just as the stars in the sky metaphor shows, the "most" we refer to could be leaving out that one beautiful finding we have been searching for... no?

So basically what I am saying is that, yes, "science" may have checked 95% of a "field" be it a physical field or field of study, for the desired trait in question, but what about the last 5% and is it simply wishful thinking to check all these 5%s around the world?


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OfflinePTreeDish
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: DdaShroom]
    #26552764 - 03/23/20 10:10 AM (3 years, 10 months ago)

You're aren't wrong. I've often used the amateur astronomy community and their many contributions as an comparison, but it never seems to catch on with those who object to my efforts. In the end, it will probably come down to a personal choice about where to invest time and resources.

In the meantime, I continue to dream about an open source antibiotic discovery kit where a massive DIY community can run assays at home and share their results.


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OfflineDdaShroom
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: PTreeDish]
    #26552767 - 03/23/20 10:12 AM (3 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

PTreeDish said:
You're aren't wrong. I've often used the amateur astronomy community and their many contributions as an comparison, but it never seems to catch on with those who object to my efforts. In the end, it will probably come down to a personal choice about where to invest time and resources.

In the meantime, I continue to dream about an open source antibiotic discovery kit where a massive DIY community can run assays at home and share their results.




I dont think many could deny... that would be a gorgeous reality.


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OfflinePTreeDish
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: DdaShroom]
    #26552792 - 03/23/20 10:27 AM (3 years, 10 months ago)

It could happen. We need a supportive experienced microbiologist to help guide what kinds of testing and method of publishing results would yield the kind of data that would be most useful in antibiotic discovery.

If we can 100 amateurs to run 5 tests a month for 6 months, that's 3000 test results. If we presume that of the 3000, 1% are previously unexplored organisms, that's 30 potential new antibiotic sources to be further studied.

If out of the 30, 3% end up actually being potential new antibiotics, that's 1 new antibiotic source added to the pipeline every year.

Massive oversimplification here, but I don't think it's completely a crazy idea.


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OfflineDdaShroom
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: PTreeDish]
    #26552808 - 03/23/20 10:37 AM (3 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

PTreeDish said:
It could happen. We need a supportive experienced microbiologist to help guide what kinds of testing and method of publishing results would yield the kind of data that would be most useful in antibiotic discovery.

If we can 100 amateurs to run 5 tests a month for 6 months, that's 3000 test results. If we presume that of the 3000, 1% are previously unexplored organisms, that's 30 potential new antibiotic sources to be further studied.

If out of the 30, 3% end up actually being potential new antibiotics, that's 1 new antibiotic source added to the pipeline every year.

Massive oversimplification here, but I don't think it's completely a crazy idea.




Having just graduated the Universoty of Nebraska, I have made a good connection in Gerard Adam's, the fungal biologist and mycologidt on campus. There is a mycologist at most, if not all BIG TEN schools. So, maybe universities could be the way to go, plus being able to slap your schools name on that assistance would be a huge incentive imo.


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OfflinePTreeDish
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Re: Sharing a Possible New Antibiotic [Re: DdaShroom]
    #26553052 - 03/23/20 12:37 PM (3 years, 10 months ago)

Hey, congrats on the graduation! That's a great connection and not a bad idea. If you get a chance, run it by your contact and see what they have to say. I'd be interested in hearing. I'd also be happy to jump on a call with us three and facilitate a deeper discussion.

In general, I'm a huge believer in the future of DIY biology and making home-based research as accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of academic or professional background.

Since my background is in software engineering and now in Interpersonal Neurobiology, I equate the potential for DIY biology to what has happened in the software engineering world.

All of the information necessary to build the next great app is widely and freely available to anyone. You don't need to be a computer scientists, have a degree or even understand how a basic transistor works in order to build a practical, functional and useful app.

We're on the cusp of this sort of paradigm shift in DIY biology and I believe it's going to happen with or without me.


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