Posted for all of our platypus members…
The milk of the platypus may contain a protein that can fight drug-resistant bacteria.
Now, a new analysis of that protein reveals that its shape is as bizarre as the shape of the animal that excreted it. The protein has a never-before-seen protein fold, now dubbed the “Shirley Temple” thanks to its ringlet-like structure, according to researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and Deakin University in Australia.
“Platypuses are such weird animals that it would make sense for them to have weird biochemistry,” study researcher Janet Newman of CSIRO said in a statement.
Platypuses are monotremes, or egg-laying mammals. They suckle their young, but they don’t have teats or nipples. Instead, they “sweat” milk from glands on their bellies. Baby platypuses gather around their supine mother, lapping up puddles of milk from her skin.