As he expanded his research, he found the same problems among alligators in lakes and marshes that hadn’t experienced such a catastrophe, including Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades of western Broward County. In Lake Apopka, site of a pesticide spill in 1980, he found male alligators with underdeveloped genitals and female alligators unable to produce healthy eggs. In the lakes and marshes of Florida, biologist Lou Guillette in 1994 found some of the first evidence of chemicals that may be disrupting the reproductive systems of animals and humans. Travis Glenn, a biologist at the University of Georgia who is coordinating efforts to sequence the alligator genome, said the National Institutes of Health turned down a proposal last year but appeared inclined to approve it this year or next.ĭespite their stout resistance to what nature dishes out, alligators have turned out to be vulnerable to man-made chemicals. The National Institutes of Health’s National Human Genome Research Institute has paid for the sequencing of several species that have some bearing on human health or basic biology, such as the fruit fly, Norwegian rat and the mosquito that transmits malaria. The alligator’s potential benefit to human health has led scientists to propose sequencing its genome, the long chains of nucleic acids that make up its DNA. “But in the body we have to worry about whether the anti-microbial peptides will go where they have to go and kill what they have to kill.”

“In the test tube, there’s no problem,” he said. Zasloff said that while peptides from alligators and other animals can kill germs in laboratory experiments, they could be toxic in people or they could fail to function without the specific white cells that deploy them in the original animal’s body. Zasloff, the Georgetown immune system expert, said several drugs derived from animal peptides are in development, although none has received government approval for use in humans. They’re short chains of amino acids, called peptides, which attack invading microbes. You can’t, for example, cure AIDS merely by injecting alligator blood into a patient.Īs a first step, Merchant and other scientists have begun studying the proteins at the heart of the alligator’s powerful immune system.

But it’s difficult to translate resistance to disease in animals to resistance in people. So it’s of great interest to us.”Īs a growing number of microbes develop resistance to antibiotics, scientists are searching the animal and plant worlds for sources of new drugs. It kills all types of bacteria, many types of fungi and viruses. “Their immune system is very, very broad acting,” said Merchant, who has published several papers on the subject.

Alligator blood collection tail clip