Antibiotic CIPRO may become basis of new herbicide
As if the antibiotic run off from factory farms isn’t bad enough, it appears West Australian scientists are, “exploring the possibilities for an antibiotic to be used as a new herbicide”.
The drug Ciprofloxacin (Cipro) is currently used to kill gangrene, cholecystitis, chlamydia and a host of other bacterial infections. “It kills plants in a very similar fashion to the way it kills microbes, by binding and interfering with an enzyme called gyrase, which helps the DNA unwind as it’s being replicated”, reports ABC.
According to Dr Josh Mylne, senior lecturer at the University of Western Australia in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the way in which ciprofloxacin works is different than existing herbicides, “The machinery that ciprofloxacin affects is not currently targeted by known herbicides, making this an untried mode of action to focus on,” Dr Mylne told ABC.
Because of people’s growing resistance(rightly so) to glyphosate(which was originally an antibiotic)the agro-chemical industry is on the lookout for new products that farmers won’t be worried using. In the last 15 to 20 years, nothing new has been discovered and time is money.
This smells like trouble to me. Take a moment and watch this:
Source: ABC.au
