IN A land where survival is precarious, Komodo dragons thrive despite being exposed to great numbers of bacteria. Now scientists believe they have found antibacterial protein fragments in the lizard's blood that appear to help them fight off deadly infections.
It's a discovery they hope could lead to the development of new drugs to fight the growing number of infections resistant to antibiotics.
"Nature can provide great templates and models for the development of new drugs against these hard-to-kill bacteria," said Monique van Hoek from the College of Science at George Mason University in the USA.
The researchers acquired samples of blood collected from a Komodo dragon named Tujah, who lives at the St Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park in Florida.
Their analysis of the blood revealed a complex mixture of promising peptides, many of which were fragments of larger proteins. These peptides are small proteins that contribute to the body's first line of immune defence against infection.
The team looked for bacteria-killing peptides that inhibited bacterial growth and reported finding peptides that showed activity against the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus.
The world's largest lizard, Komodo dragons are evolutionarily ancient reptiles. They live on five small Indonesian islands and dine on carrion.
Their saliva contains at least 57 species of bacteria believed to contribute to the way they kill their prey.
The researchers are also investigating American alligators and other large reptiles, including saltwater crocodiles, Chinese alligators and Siamese crocodiles.