 |
| The bacterium Streptomyces, found in soil, has a biological switch that can turn on antibiotic production.--Courtesy of CDC |
Scientists have identified a switch in soil-dwelling bacteria that turns on a process to make naturally derived antibiotics--a mechanism that may be useful in creating more effective antibiotics to combat increasingly resistant superbugs.
As antibiotic resistance rises worldwide, Big Pharma has largely left the antibiotics space, leaving a dearth of new antibiotics in the global pipeline. But the finding, detailed in the journal Cell, could help scientists develop a new class of antibiotics.
Researchers at the Duke University School of Medicine and John Innes Centre in the U.K. found the development switch in Streptomyces, a group of gram-positive bacteria that produce more than two-thirds of clinically available natural antibiotics, including neomycin and chloramphenicol, both discovered in 1949.
An interaction between the small molecule cyclic-di-GMP and the larger protein BldD dictates whether a bacterium stays in an inactive state or kicks into gear to make antibiotics.
Up until now, scientists didn't know what controlled this process. But the Duke team found that the small molecule BldD--a regulator protein known as a transcription factor--assembles into a kind of molecular glue to connect two copies of BldD, which together have the ability to regulate development in Streptomyces.
This switch, which glues cyclic-di-GMP and BldD together to turn off sporulation and turns on antibiotic production, could be used to exploit the natural antibiotic-making ability of Streptomyces and design more effective antibiotics.
- get the study abstract
- read the press release
Industry Voices: Cubist exec: Challenges mount in antibiotics discovery