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Reply to "Mysterious explosion of a deadly plague may come down to a sugar in ice cream"

Mysterious explosion of a deadly plague may come down to a sugar in ice cream

C. diff kills tens of thousands each year. Its puzzling rise links to trehalose.


With a study published in Nature recently, scientists think they’ve finally figured out what that enigmatic element was—and it’s even more obscure than anyone may have guessed. It wasn’t some new weapon the bacteria acquired or a waning antibiotic. It was a boring, harmless sugar—one often found in ice creams. And its part of the story started back in the ‘90s in Japan.

At the time, food scientists were trying to come up with an inexpensive way to make that sugar, called trehalose. It’s a disaccharide made up of two glucose molecules linked with a sturdy α,α-1,1-glucoside bond, and it’s naturally found in low levels in some bacteria, fungi, plants, and invertebrates. Its chemistry made food scientists drool. Trehalose’s strong bond means it’s resistant to breaking down in high temperatures and acidic conditions. It also seems to have a gel phase that stabilizes and protects cells from extreme dryness and cold. In foods, it can be used as a mild sweetener, moisture-preserver, thickener, and stabilizer. The trouble was, making it in large quantities was expensive—about $700 per kilogram.

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