Antibiotic Class Emerges through Digestive Enzyme

Scientists in the U.S. and Italy have discovered that fragments of the stomach enzyme pepsinogen, which when activated normally help to digest proteins in our food, also have antibiotic activity that can kill food-borne and lung pathogens. The researchers, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of Naples Federico II, used a computational-experimental framework to look for peptide and protein sequences that are similar to those of the body’s own antimicrobial pep