Infections with bacterium Clostridium difficile have rapidly become a meaningful medical problem in hospitals and long-term care facilities. The bacteria cause diarrhea and life-threatening inflammation of the colon by producing toxins that kill the endothelial cells that form the lining of the intestine. Although a natural inhibitor of these toxins,called InsP6, works in the test tube, or it is not very efficient when administered orally. Traditional methods to optimize InsP6 have until now not been successful,but researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have discovered that changing one atom in InsP6 can increase its ability to neutralize the toxins by 26-fold. The results appear in Science Advances.
Source: phys.org