The secret lives of antibiotics are more interesting than we ever knew. Researchers analyzing two commonly prescribed drugs say these medications attack bacteria using never-before-seen techniques—a discovery that could help us develop better drugs in the future. The team published its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Chloramphenicol (CHL) is an aggressive broad-spectrum antibiotic that’s been around since the 1940s. It’s injected intravenously to treat serious infections like meningitis, cholera, plague, and anthrax, but the risks of use are so extreme that it’s typically only used as a drug of last resort.
Linezolid (LZD) is both newer and gentler. It’s prescribed for common illnesses like pneumonia and strep, but has also proven itself against drug-resistant bacteria like the one that causes the staph infection MRSA.
Despite differences in their structure, the two drugs fight disease the same way many other antibiotics do: by sticking to the catalytic center of a bacterial cell and blocking its ability to synthesize proteins. Because other drugs are universal inhibitors—that is, they prevent any and all synthesis—scientists assumed CHL and LZD would be, too.
Researchers at the University of Illinois, Chicago were not content to assume. They wanted to know for sure what the two antibiotics were up to. They cultured colonies of E. coli bacteria, exposed them to strong doses of CHL and LZD, then sequenced the beleaguered bacteria’s genes to see what was going on inside.
As expected, CHL and LZD were all up on the bacteria’s ribosomes, frustrating its attempts to put proteins together. But the drugs weren’t as totalitarian as scientists had believed. Instead, their approach seemed both specific and context-dependent, switching targets based on which amino acids were present.
“These findings indicate that the nascent protein modulates the properties of the ribosomal catalytic center and affects binding of its ligands, including antibiotics,” co-author Nora Vazquez-Laslop said in a statement. In other words: It seems amino acids have a lot more influence than we realized.
As so often happens in science, finding these answers also raised a lot of questions (like “How many other antibiotics have we mischaracterized?”), but it also opens a door for medical science, said co-author Alexander Mankin.
“If you know how these inhibitors work, you can make better drugs and make them better tools for research. You can also use them more efficiently to treat human and animal diseases.”
Troll dolls—like witches or choker necklaces—seem to make a comeback every decade or two. And while children of the ’90s might remember collecting the wild-haired, naked dolls with gemstones for bellybuttons or topping their pencils with the miniature figures, children of the ’60s were collecting their own versions. And now, with the new Trolls movie hitting theaters this weekend (and that Justin Timberlake song still rattling around in your head), it’s time for everyone’s favorite potbellied, grinning fuzz-tops to rule the toy aisle once again.
1. THE FIRST TROLL DOLLS WERE WOODEN.
Danish fisherman Thomas Dam was very often out of work, but he had a talent for carving figures out of wood. Though he initially carved little gifts for his children, his wife recognized the monetary potential in his hobby. She encouraged him to sell some door-to-door, which turned into a job making larger Christmas displays for a department store window in 1956. Customers began asking to buy the trolls from the displays, and before long, Dam was spending all of his time carving troll dolls to sell. Soon after, he opened a factory and switched to the more economical method of making the bodies out of rubber stuffed with wood shavings. By the end of the ‘50s, he was selling more than 10,000 trolls in Denmark each year.
2. DAM’S TROLLS WERE ROOTED IN SCANDINAVIAN FOLKLORE.
While trolls range from large to child-sized in various fairytales, their primary characteristic has always been their extreme ugliness. In their mythology, they often live under bridges or in the mountains, they spend their time tricking humans out of their money, and they’re always hideous. But Dam managed to take the usually ugly features—wrinkly faces, bulbous noses, oversized ears—and turn them into tiny, oddly adorable figurines. And since, according to Scandinavian tradition, nothing bad can happen to a person who is laughing, Dam thought of his charmingly unattractive little trolls—which he named Good Luck Trolls—as chuckle-inducing talismans. “They were so ugly,” Dam once said, “that you couldn’t help but laugh, and when you laugh, luck follows you.”
Even Dam’s first trolls had the wild, crazy hair that has become their trademark. The Icelandic sheep’s wool used was dyed three colors—white, black, or orange—and glued on the tops of the dolls for a bushy, exaggerated mane that Life magazine called “strangely soothing to the touch.” And though the company eventually switched to synthetic hair that stood even more upright, Dam said production demand for the dolls was so high in 1964 that he had to buy Iceland’s entire wool harvest that year.
Dam seemed to know he had a damn funny name (it’s pronounced more like “dahm” than the American “damn”). Once his trolls took off, he named his toy-making company Dam Things, and the highest quality of these trolls became known as Dam Dolls. One design even went by the name Dammit.
5. THE LARGE MAJORITY OF TROLLS ON THE MARKET WEREN’T DAM’S DOLLS, THOUGH.
By the early 1960s, trolls were a huge international trend. Dam rapidly expanded his distribution network, opening factories in New Zealand and Florida. But because of their immediate success, and due to Dam’s lack of a copyright, knock-off trolls showed up on shelves all over America. Competing companies put out troll-esque dolls with names like Wish-niks, Fauni Trolls, and Lucky Shnooks. According to The New York Times, “the Dam Company earned only a small percentage of the estimated $4.5 billion made from Trolls throughout the world.”
6. ONE DAMMIT DOLL HAD AN AUDIENCE WITH THE PRESIDENT.
Amelia Earhart made headlines in 1932 for becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and it took 31 years before pilot Betty Miller became the first woman to earn that title for the Pacific. Her only company for the arduous flight? A Dammit doll. Following her historic flight, Miller was invited to the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy, and she brought her trusty troll doll with her.
When the troll takeover of America hit, it hit hard. The Chicago Tribune reported in a 1964 trend piece that “bring your own troll” parties were “‘in’ among the teenage set,” and many of those devotees grew up to be major collectors. A West Virginian woman named Paula Dolog—alias: “The Troll Princess”—told her local newspaper in 2009 that she’d collected so many troll dolls over the course of 45 years that she had “trolls that haven’t seen the light of day in years.” Other devotees told stories of picking up trolls to cheer ailing family members, only to begin collecting them in earnest soon after. And when the ’90s wave took hold, 29-year-old Lisa Kerner put together a pre-internet Craigslist of sorts called Troll Monthly Magazine, intended to help collectors sell and trade the dolls. Scouring resale sites today will still bring up all manner of troll dolls, from a 1950s stuffed Dam doll going for $225; to themed dolls, like this vintage Viking troll for $175; to a terrifying Lucky Shnooks doll from the ’60s.
8. A SELF-PROCLAIMED TROLL QUEEN RUNS A TROLL MUSEUM.
In Alliance, Ohio, a woman named Sigrid calls herself the Troll Queen. She claims to be a huldra troll—the kind of troll that disguises itself to appear human—and has used her passion for the creatures to amass a collection of nearly 3000 unique trolls, setting a Guinness World Record. Sigrid (human name: Sherry Groom) has turned her love of the dolls into a weird and wonderful museum called The Troll Hole, which now houses more than 18,000 trolls and memorabilia. She gives guided, costumed tours once a day; there’s only a $10 troll toll to visit the Troll Hole.
In a move called “Trolls on Patrol,” the police department in Tarpon Springs, Florida bought 5000 troll dolls in 2003 and put them to work. The goal? To build relationships with area children. “It should bring some friendly interaction,” police chief Mark G. LeCouris told the St. Petersburg Times at the time, noting that they wanted local kids to see police officers as approachable role models, and that their previous giveaways of items like junior police badges and “Say No to Drugs” bracelets had always been popular with kids. Police handed out the trolls at Halloween and at various community events. “They really put smiles on kids’ faces,” LeCouris said.
10. FOUR DECADES LATER, THE DAM COMPANY WON THEIR PATENT.
Even though Thomas Dam lost his creation to the public domain in America in the ’60s, his company soldiered on in Europe. The ’80s saw another wave of troll fandom, most notably when a New York-based marketing executive named Eva Stark decided to import large numbers of Dam’s trolls and rebrand them as Norfin dolls (“Norfin” being a portmanteau of “elfin,” “orphan,” “Norway,” and “Finland”; no word on why “Danish” or “Denmark” wasn’t thrown in for consideration). Thomas Dam died in 1989, but new laws passed in 1994 allowed the Dam Company to sue copycat manufacturers. Eventually, they won the worldwide rights to the troll doll image.
11. EVEN WITH A MAJOR SALE, THE DAM COMPANY KEPT THEIR HOLD ON SCANDINAVIA.
After a misguided attempt to update the Troll brand (recreating them in the image of Bratz dolls in 2005 and calling them Trollz was a huge failure), the Dam Company agreed to sell worldwide rights—save Scandinavia, naturally—to DreamWorks Animation in 2013. “Trolls is one of those rare, proven and universally adored brands,” DreamWorks’s franchise head, Shawn Dennis, said at the time of their intention to create a multi-platform marketing plan. Within the year they’d reworked the Trolls movie’s original concept, turning it into a musical comedy that would eventually bring on Justin Timberlake as the executive musical producer. That choice, at least, has already paid off—the debut song from the soundtrack, “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”, topped the charts in more than 15 countries when it was released.
12. HASBRO HAS RELEASED A NEW LINE OF TROLL DOLLS.
courtesy Hasbro
Not only do the trolls from the new DreamWorks movie have updated faces (the large heads and stubby bodies resemble the ’60s originals, but the facial features are far less oversized—or wrinkly), they now also come with huggable plush bodies. And with so many of the Trolls movie characters getting both the plastic figurine and plush doll treatment, it seems only a matter of time before the collectors come out in full force again.
Nutella fanatics know there are numerous ways to consume the chocolatey, hazelnut treat. But the FDA applies a strict definition to the product: According to the U.S. government, Nutella is officially a dessert topping, and that categorization is reflected in the nutrition facts on its label. Now, NPR reports, Ferrero—the makers of Nutella—are petitioning the FDA to place it under the same label as honey, jam, and other sweet spreads. Doing so would reduce the serving size from two tablespoons to one and therefore cut the listed calories in half, making the product more attractive to health-conscious individuals.
The two-tablespoon suggested serving size assumes you’ll be eating it as part of a dessert: Either spread on top of cupcakes, dolloped on ice cream, or piped inside pastries. When the FDA surveyed consumers in the early 1990s, “a significant number” of respondents reported using the spread as an ice cream topping.
But times have changed: Between 2009 and 2014, Nutella sales tripled to $240 million in the U.S. Now the sweet product holds a trendy status few brands can lay claim to. And according to Ferrero, that chic reputation has helped the spread break out of the dessert mold. A 2012 consumer survey conducted by the company found that 60 percent of the women surveyed like to eat their Nutella on bread. At 14 percent, the second most popular use was as a sandwich filling, and 8 percent of responders said they like to spread their Nutella on crackers. Nutella was enjoyed with ice cream only 2 percent of the time.
The FDA is conducting a survey of their own. They will consider reclassifying Nutella and similar spreads as part of the group that contains “honey, jams, jellies, fruit butter, [and] molasses” or creating a separate category altogether for nut cocoa-based spreads based on consumer feedback. If you have strong feelings about how Nutella should or should not be eaten, or if you just want to share your preferences, you can send your comments to the FDA here.
Police in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, were called out Tuesday to round up a runaway pig. The potbellied pig, named Kevin Bacon, was found wandering on Russell Street. Officers Nick Webber and Cody Schultz said the pig was happy and friendly, and gave them no trouble at all.
Woodworth chuckled and said, “I think he was just excited to be out front. You could say he was footloose and fancy free.”
She said Bacon was not in any danger and was following the rules of the road by staying on the sidewalk, adding that he hadn’t ventured far from his home after likely escaping from his backyard.
Kevin Bacon was safety returned to his owner.
FAMILY CAN’T KEEP BIRTHDAYS STRAIGHT
Sandra Blackman of Bristol, England, has celebrated her birthday on November 10 for more than 50 years. But she recently ordered a copy other birth certificate and found that she was born on November 11. As if that weren’t confusing enough, her old school records have her birthday listed as November 12. Birthday confusion appears to run in the family. Blackman’s mother celebrated her birthday a week later than the actual date for 16 years. She blames it on the fact that her grandmother had a lot of children. Nevertheless, Blackman is throwing herself a birthday party on the 10th at the Brunel Pub, and has invited everyone through the local newspaper.
SPIDER CAUSES MAN TO DRIVE INTO LAKE
An unnamed driver in New South Wales, Australia, was taking some castoff material to the dump when he was surprised by a huntsman spider. Huntsman spiders are venomous but not deadly to humans. However, they can grow very large. When the driver saw the spider, he was approaching a bend in the road on Kenwood Drive, hit the accelerator instead of the brake, and the car plunged over an embankment into Lake Cathie. The car sank, but the driver was able to escape through the car’s open window. Emergency services took the driver to a hospital for minor injuries, and a project is underway to recover the four-year-old Toyota Prado.
NINE ELEMENTARY STUDENTS SUSPENDED FOR POSSESSION OF KOOL-AID
Nine students at Eagles Nest Elementary School in Dorchester County, South Carolina, faced expulsion for having “happy crack” in their possession at the school. Their parents did not know what “happy crack” is, but found out it’s a combination of sugar and Kool-Aid powder. The ten-year-olds were buying what they considered Pixy Stix from each other. The students had an expulsion hearing on Tuesday for a level three infraction of school rules.
Administrators at the district office say possession of any substance, whether illegal or not, that looks like an illegal substance is a violation of a school policy, stating the following:
“No student will market or distribute any substance which is represented to be or is substantial similar in color, shape, size or markings of a controlled substance in any of the circumstances listed above. Look-alike substance or substances that mimic the effect of drugs will be treated as illegal substances.”
Parents met with school officials on Tuesday, and the charges were reduced to level one infractions. The students returned to school on Thursday.
SQUIRREL ATTACKS PEOPLE AT SENIOR CENTER
A squirrel jumped up and began attacking people Thursday at Sterling Court, a Deltona, Florida, retirement community. One person was bitten and scratched outside, and then threw the squirrel off -and into the building. There, it attacked other residents. An employee called 911 to report that people were bleeding. The residents managed to throw the squirrel back outside, but three people were taken to a hospital for their injuries. They were all released and are doing well.
STEVEN SEAGAL GRANTED RUSSIAN CITIZENSHIP
Russian president Vladimir Putin issued an executive order to grant Russian citizenship to his longtime friend, actor Steven Seagal. Seagal has expressed a desire for citizenship in the Russian Federation for years. Seagal and Putin have a common interest in martial arts, and have appeared together at martial arts events. Achieving Russian citizenship does not mean that Seagal is giving up his American citizenship.
