160-million-year-old proteins show surprising power against superbugs — SkimNews
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- University of Oregon biologists reconstructed antimicrobial peptides from lactoferrin dating back 160 million years to the common ancestor of all placental mammals, near the end of the Jurassic Period.
- Published in PLOS Biology on Aug. 25, 2026, the study was led by doctoral student Titas Sil and senior author Matt Barber, an evolutionary biologist in UO's College of Arts and Sciences, and funded by the National Institutes of Health.
- Some reconstructed peptides were more potent against pathogens than current human versions, with researchers tracing much of the increased effectiveness to a single mutation in the chain of amino acids.
- The team tested the ancient peptides against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Streptococcus — the oldest resurrected versions disrupted bacterial membranes but bacteria repaired the damage, while more recent ancestors became progressively more effective.
- Researchers used ancestral sequence reconstruction, a method pioneered by former UO scientist Joseph Thornton, to statistically estimate the genetic sequences carried by extinct mammalian ancestors.
- Barber and Sil caution the resurrected peptides are unlikely to become medicines anytime soon because they are less structurally stable and rapidly broken down inside the body, but argue the evolutionary record could guide future antimicrobial design.
Why it matters: The researchers themselves caution that these resurrected peptides won't become drugs soon due to rapid breakdown in the body — but the evolutionary trail of lactoferrin offers a roadmap for designing new antimicrobial tools as existing antibiotics lose effectiveness against resistant strains like Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which kill roughly 1.27 million people globally each year.
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