NZ fungi show promising antibacterial properties

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-09-06 14:00

New Zealand

Fungi. Credit: Shara van der Pas

The search is on to find new antibiotics that can kill Mycobacteria, a kind of bacteria responsible for deadly and hard-to-treat diseases like tuberculosis. University of Auckland researchers looked at 36 fungi from across NZ to see if any showed the anti-mycobacterial activity they were looking for, and almost all did. Furthermore, they report using a new tool to screen the fungi that’s based on the power of bioluminescence. More work is underway to figure out why these fungi have these properties.

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Journal/
conference: Frontiers in Microbiology

Organisation/s: University of Auckland, Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research

Funder: This work was supported by funds from Cure Kids (9102 3715810), NZ Carbon Farming (91023718092), the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery (9159 3715235), and donations from the New Zealand public. BSW, DP and the ICMP culture collection were funded by the SSIF infrastructure investment fund of the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

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