Discovery of a unique approach to kill bacteria
A new group of antibiotics that have a unique way of attacking bacteria has been discovered by a team led by professor Gerry Wright of the David Braley Centre for Antibiotic Discovery within the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University, Canada.
The discovery comes from the glycopeptide family of antibiotics. The research published in Nature shows that corbomycin and complestatin have a novel mode of action to kill bacteria, which is achieved by blocking the function of the bacterial cell wall. The team looked at the family tree of known members of the glycopeptides and researched the genes of those that lacked known resistance mechanisms, with the idea that these might be antibiotics with a different approach to attack bacteria.
The full article is available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1990-9
