By Stephen Beech

Stunning images reveal for the first time how antibiotics pierce deadly bacteria’s armor.

British scientists have shown how life-saving drugs called polymyxins puncture the defenses of harmful bugs.

They say their findings could lead to new treatments for bacterial infections such as E. coli , especially urgent as drug-resistant infections kill more than one million people a year.

Polymyxins were discovered over 80 years ago and are used as a “last-resort” treatment for infections caused by “Gram negative” bacteria.

The research team, led by University College London (UCL) and Imperial College London scientists, explained that those bacteria have an outer surface layer that acts like armor and prevents certain antibiotics from penetrating the cell.

Polymyxins a

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