Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. In the late eighteenth century, British
Speaker 1: zoologist George Shaw was asked to examine a specimen of
Speaker 1: a newly discovered creature fresh off the boat from Australia.
Speaker 1: He was one of the first scientists to clap eyes
Speaker 1: on the beaver duck that we call a platypus, and
Speaker 1: he understandably thought he was the but of a practical joke.
Speaker 1: He wrote, after examining the noble creature, it naturally excites
Speaker 1: the idea of some deceptive preparation by artificial means. And
Speaker 1: it's not like the platypus's outlandish appearance is just a
Speaker 1: cover for an unremarkable physiology and life history. This egg
Speaker 1: laying mammal choose its food with gravel because it lacks teeth.
Speaker 1: In fact, it doesn't even have a stomach, but an
Speaker 1: esophagus that connects directly to its intestines. The males have
Speaker 1: venomous spurs on their hind legs, and they don't use
Speaker 1: their tails to steer or propel themselves through the water,
Speaker 1: but to store body fat. And their bills are so
Speaker 1: sensitive that they can detect the electromagnetic fields radiated by
Speaker 1: other organisms, allowing them to swim with their ears, eyes,
Speaker 1: and nose closed. But listen, y'all, it gets weirder platypuses
Speaker 1: and yes, you can also say platypi or platipodes if
Speaker 1: you want. Nurse they're young, but they don't have nipples,
Speaker 1: so the milk to sort of oozes out of their
Speaker 1: mammary glands and the babies lap it up off their
Speaker 1: mother's fur. And if you think that might be a
Speaker 1: bit on sanitary, especially for an animal that swims around
Speaker 1: in farm ponds all day, you'd be right. But don't worry.
Speaker 1: Platypus evolution came up with a solution to the problem
Speaker 1: of bacteria. Study found that while all mammals milk has
Speaker 1: antibacterial properties, platypus milk seems to have very special antimicrobial powers.
Speaker 1: A study published in March in the journal Structural Biology
Speaker 1: Communications reports that the biochemical reason for the germ busting
Speaker 1: properties of platypus milk is predictably weird. It contains a
Speaker 1: protein with a unique and previously unknown structure that might
Speaker 1: be key in fighting bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics.
Speaker 1: What makes this monotream lactation protein or MLP so strange
Speaker 1: is its shape. Its folds form tight ringlets, which is
Speaker 1: why it was Christian to the Shirley Temple protein after
Speaker 1: the iconic hair of the child Star. The research team
Speaker 1: managed to recreate the MLP in the lab, purify it,
Speaker 1: crystallize it, and then use X rays to determine its
Speaker 1: three D structure at the atomic level, a structure that
Speaker 1: has never been seen in any of the hundred thousand
Speaker 1: proteins discovered to date. Lead study author Janet Newman said,
Speaker 1: the most exciting thing for me was to see a
Speaker 1: protein shape that had never been seen before. It's like
Speaker 1: being a florist and seeing a completely new flower. So
Speaker 1: how could this fancy new antibacterial protein be used to
Speaker 1: fight superbugs? According to Newman, the research team plans to
Speaker 1: begin by figuring out the relationship between the extra curly
Speaker 1: form of the protein and its bacteria killing powers. She said,
Speaker 1: in theory, there are a number of approaches. We could
Speaker 1: tweak the structure a little by making site directed mutants
Speaker 1: of the protein in the lab. This would allow us
Speaker 1: to see how the activity changes each time, until we
Speaker 1: build up an understanding of the mechanism of how this works,
Speaker 1: or maybe we could use some form of the protein
Speaker 1: to try to isolate its binding partner on the bacterium,
Speaker 1: which might be some structure on the outside of the bacterium.
Speaker 1: According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic resistant bacterial infections
Speaker 1: are becoming a serious threat to public health worldwide. The
Speaker 1: heavy use of antibiotics and intensive animal farming, as well
Speaker 1: as overuse in human hospitals, has led to the rise
Speaker 1: and spread of these heavy duty microbes. Diseases like salmonella, pneumonia, tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: and gnarrhea, all once easily treated with antibiotics, are becoming
Speaker 1: less responsive to the drugs used to treat them. In
Speaker 1: the World Health Organization warned that we may be approaching
Speaker 1: a post antibiotic era, wherein antibiotics will no longer be
Speaker 1: effective in fighting infection. This would make everything from childbirth
Speaker 1: to organ transplants very difficult again. But maybe platypus milk
Speaker 1: can help. It's predictably so crazy that it just might work.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: beautifully bizarre topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com