This Forgotten Turkey Bacteria Could Lead to the Super-Antibiotic of the Future

A peculiar strain of turkey bacteria was locked away and frozen over 30 years ago, forgotten by all but a few researchers. Now, it's been rediscovered and it could be used to engineer an extremely potent antibiotic for humans.

Strain 115, a naturally occurring bacteria in turkeys that produces a powerful antibiotic known as MP1, was first discovered by Marcus Jensen, a professor at Brigham Young University. Jensen found that turkeys carrying Strain 115 had a natural resistance to a range of harmful bacteria like anthrax, staph, and strep.

Jensen used Strain 115 to engineer effective inoculations and probiotics for turkeys, and apparently often just sprayed a bunch of birds with the stuff. But when he retired in 1983, Strain 115 retired with him.

Many questions about Strain 115 remained unanswered after Jensen left the field. How could it produce such a deadly antibiotic without killing itself in the process? Could it ever be used in humans? A team of researchers at Brigham Young recently dusted off Jensen's samples to analyze Strain 115 and find the answers, which they revealed in a new study published today in the Journal of Bacteriology.

"Technology back in the 80s wasn't where it is now," Joel Griffits, one of the new study's authors, told me. "We've been able to harness new technologies in DNA sequencing and other kinds of chemical analysis to rapidly figure out what the molecular basis is for the properties of this strain."

Using mass spectrometry to analyze the chemical composition of Strain 115 and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to peek into its molecular structure, the researchers discovered that the bacteria's plasmid—a tiny DNA molecule—produces a particular kind of protein that renders Strain 115 immune to the effects of MP1, its own killer antibiotic.

Griffits and his colleagues also pitted MP1 against a host of bacteria and found that it killed nearly all of the gram-positive bacteria they tried. (Bacteria belong to either one of two groups, gram-positive or gram-negative, named for their ability or inability to contain the violet dye used in the bacteria-identifying Gram stain test.) Thus, MP1 could potentially be effective against a large swath of infectious bacteria.

Knowing the basics of how Strain 115 produces MP1, as well as how effective the antibiotic really is, opens the door to further work that could eventually lead to highly adaptive and widely effective inoculations for humans.

"We can pretty easily imagine engineering the antibiotic so that it has better properties for use in the clinic," Griffits said. "We could engineer its potency, and its ability to avoid resistance. We can cause it to either kill bacteria more effectively or target a site that is less easily mutated. We could engineer an antibiotic that is more robust against the evolution of resistance."

Because Strain 115's structure is so complex, Griffits told me, researchers may find a number of ways to tailor it to their specific needs. With more research into how the antibiotic is produced and how it can be manipulated, there could come a time when MP1 will be engineered to inoculate against a whole spectrum of infectious bacteria, be it anthrax or staph, or just one kind.

"Another thing that can be done with the antibiotic is to cause its spectrum to change in terms of what kinds of bacteria it will be effective against," Griffits explained. "In some cases, you want broader spectrum activity, and in others you want narrower spectrum activity."

Griffits and his colleagues at Brigham Young University are just now delving back into an investigation that sputtered to a stop 30 years ago, and they're focused on basic research into Strain 115. That means that there's plenty of lab work to come before we can engineer a super-antibiotic from turkey bacteria.

Still, if a hunk of tender turkey is your thing this Thanksgiving, you could very well be chewing a mouthful of what could eventually lead to a preventative treatment for all kinds of harmful infections.​