Combating multidrug-resistant bacteria with nanoengineered peptide polymers

Re:Combating multidrug-resistant bacteria with nanoengineere... by nonbel on Wednesday September 28, 2016 @02:02AM (#12595726)

A peptide is already a polymer. This is basic definitional stuff:

>"peptides fall under the broad chemical classes of biological oligomers and polymers" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peptide

Really the people doing the research have responsibility to speak out against this kind of jargon loading hype... Oh I see it is the title they chose for their own paper. I didn't read the paper, but the presence of hyping activities meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator has proven itself a decent heuristic so I won't bother.

Also, pretty much every bacteria is "multi-drug resistant".

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Re:Combating multidrug-resistant bacteria with nanoengineere... by VygmraMGVl on Wednesday September 28, 2016 @02:48AM (#12595873)

These are peptides bound to a polymer particle that is not made out of peptides, but out of another polymer (PAMAM).

The vast majority of easily cultured bacteria have demonstrated the ability to acquire multi-drug resistance over time, but that doesn't mean that most bacteria that currently exist are multi-drug resistant.

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Re:Combating multidrug-resistant bacteria with nanoengineere... by nonbel on Wednesday September 28, 2016 @08:38AM (#12597161)

I don't see how this is a correction of what I wrote. It is completely usual for a peptide to not only be a polymer itself, but also be attached to other polymers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycosylation

That term is totally meaningless in the title. Similarly, the term "multi-drug resistance" has always been about hyping up your paper. It was used until 2010 or so without any definition at all, look at all those papers:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=multi+drug+resista...

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