Deadly Chemicals named Keanu Reeves

A group of German chemists from the Institute for Research on Natural Products and the Biology of Infections. Leibniz was very impressed with the power of three natural compounds that are deadly to fungi, and after this power they named them Keanu Reeves.

A potential treatment for the fungus comes at a time when organisms are becoming increasingly resistant to known antifungal drugs, said study co-author Sebastian Götze.

The newly named microbes are not only effective against plants, researchers have found that the compounds — molecules commonly found in bacteria called lipopeptides — are also effective against human fungal infections.

“Lipopeptides kill so effectively that we named them after Keanu Reeves because he too is extremely deadly in his roles,” Götze said in a statement.

“We have an anti-infective crisis. … Many human pathogenic fungi are currently resistant to antifungals (antifungal drugs), in part because they are used in large quantities in agricultural fields.”

The newly discovered antimicrobial compounds, dubbed “ceanumycins”, are a natural by-product of Pseudomonas bacteria commonly found in soil and water. The researchers discovered the compounds while studying Pseudomonas for their effectiveness against predatory amoebae.

The scientists learned that “many of these bacterial species (Pseudomonas) are highly toxic to amoebas that feed on the bacteria,” study lead author Pierre Stalfort, head of paleobiotechnology at the Leibniz Institute, said in a statement. Stallfort and his fellow researchers wanted to study the effectiveness of bacteria against fungi, which have a cell structure similar to amoeba.