Anti-fungals are becoming less and less effective as fungi become more resistant to them.
And anyone that's had a particular bad case of athlete's foot knows, resistant fungi are anything but fun guys.
However, researchers in Germany recently stumbled across a new anti-fungal called a lipopeptide that is deadly to pretty much every fungus, including those that attack plants and animals.
"We have a crisis in anti-infectives. … Many human-pathogenic fungi are now resistant to antimycotics (antifungals) — partly because they are used in large quantities in agricultural fields," the study's co-author Sebastian Götze said.
"The lipopeptides kill so efficiently that we named them after Keanu Reeves because he, too, is extremely deadly in his roles."
That's right; the researchers named the new fungi-killing machines keanumycins.
Not only are they incredibly deadly to fungus, but keanumycins are biodegradable unlike a lot of the commercially available chemicals out there, so they're an excellent option environmentally.
But most importantly, Keanumycins are just straight up fungi-assassins.
So this is my head's up to the fungus kingdom. You shouldn't have infected John Wick's dog.
He's coming for you.
