Scientists have figured out how to use antivitamins to create antibiotics

Antivitamins are substances that inhibit the biological function of real vitamins. Some of them

have a chemical structure similar tothe structure of real vitamins, the action of which they block or limit. For this study, the team of Professor Kai Tittmann from the Göttingen Center for Molecular Biosciences at the University of Göttingen worked together with the group of Professor Bert de Groot from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and Professor Taj Begley from Texas A&M University (USA).

Together they investigated the mechanism of action onatomic level of natural anti-vitamin vitamin B1. Some bacteria are capable of producing a toxic form of this vital vitamin B1 to kill competing bacteria. This particular anti-vitamin only has one atom in addition to the naturally occurring vitamin in a seemingly unimportant place, and a fascinating research question was why the vitamin's action is still being prevented or "poisoned".

Tittmann's team used crystallographyhigh-resolution proteins to investigate how anti-vitamin suppresses an important protein in the central metabolism of bacteria. The researchers found that the "proton dance" that is commonly seen in functioning proteins almost completely stops functioning and the protein no longer works. “Just one additional atom in the anti-vitamin acts like a grain of sand in a complex gear system, blocking its finely tuned mechanics,” explains Tittmann. It is interesting to note that human proteins do relatively well with antivitamin and continue to work. Chemist de Groot and his team used computer simulations to figure out why this is so. "Human proteins either do not bind with antivitamin at all, or they are not" poisoned "," the scientist concludes.

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