Pandas’ innate immune systems produce an antimicrobial peptide that rapidly kills drug-resistant strains of bacteria.
Scientists at China’s Nanjing Agricultural University found the peptide, cathelicidin-AM, by mining the panda genome. The research showed that the synthesized peptide was effective against a wide spectrum of microorganisms. It killed bacteria by directly affecting the bacterial cell wall and membrane, and worked six times faster than existing antibiotic clindamycin.