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<h4>Other applications for glyphosate</h4> | <h4>Other applications for glyphosate</h4> | ||
− | <p>Companies like <a href="https://monsanto.com">Monsanto</a> with patented chemical technologies will generally try to patent all reasonable potential uses of that chemical in order to obtain maximal return on their research investments. Since glyphosate inhibits the aromatic biosynthetic pathway in many bacteria and parasites, | + | <p>Companies like <a href="https://monsanto.com">Monsanto</a> with patented chemical technologies will generally try to patent all reasonable potential uses of that chemical in order to obtain maximal return on their research investments. Since glyphosate inhibits the aromatic biosynthetic pathway in many bacteria and parasites, a reasonable case can be made that glyphosate might be effective as an antimicrobial. Indeed, <b><a href="https://monsanto.com">Monsanto</a> has filed in 2003 for the invention that the herbicidal agent glyphosate can be used in combination with the polyvalent anion oxalic acid to prevent and treat pathogenic infections</b> caused by protozoan parasites of the phylum Apicomplexa (<a href="https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/86/6d/8e/2d98b85f6574ef/US7771736.pdf">Patent No.: US7,771,736B2</a>). However, a lot stands between glyphosate as a substance with antimicrobial activity in the test tube and a clinically effective antimicrobial agent. A reliable effective concentration of glyphosate with a reasonable oral dose in humans is difficult to achieve, especially when glyphosate is orally applied. Moreover, glyphosate only shortly persists in humans. Glyphosate blocks the production of <i>de novo</i> synthesis of aromatic amino acids in bacteria, and the bacteria will die, or at least stop reproducing, if they cannot obtain these nutrients from the environment … but blood and tissues are not water - they are chock-full of the nutrients that microbes need to survive. The addition of aromatic amino acids to the growth medium of bacteria indeed interferes with glyphosate-dependent inhibition of the EPSP synthase (6). Moreover, <b>nobody has demonstrated so far that glyphosate is an effective antimicrobial agent for treating human or animal infections</b>. Therefore, it remains to be determined whether glyphosate may indeed act as an efficient and reliable antimicrobial agent to fight pathogenic bacteria and protozoan parasites. |
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Revision as of 07:51, 12 September 2018
Team Göttingen
iGEM 2018
Glyphosate on my plate?