You could say Mark Merchant has alligators in his blood.

Before he was a biochemistry professor at McNeese State University studying the antibiotic properties of alligator blood, Merchant was just another Southeast Texas kid fishing with his grandpa on the bayous.

The Nederland man remembers once seeing a huge old alligator that had lost a leg at some point but had healed and gone on to thrive in the bacteria-rich swampland

But if Merchant so much as scratched his arm in that water, he knew it was likely to get infected.

That told Merchant there was something special about alligators.

He tucked it away in his mind, where it later spawned the idea of using gators to create drugs that would combat infections, particularly those that have become resistant to antibiotics.

More than a decade ago, Merchant began studying the immune systems of alligators and crocodiles.

But his relationship to alligators goes beyond the scientific.

Take Murphy, the 10-foot alligator who lives in a pond inside a fenced enclosure at the McNeese research station where he keeps his specimens.

Murphy, named for Merchant's favorite beer, lurks in a hollowed-out space beneath the bank of his pool, no sign of him visible until Merchant nudges him with a stick to get his attention. Then the alligator's massive head glides into view and his jaws open in a threatening display of jagged teeth.

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Gators could hold cure to human ailments