Algorithms helped find a key compound for a future antibiotic. He uses a new method of attack, to
Humans aren't the only organisms that want to kill bacteria: nature has developed a wide range of antibacterial compounds, many of which use the bacteria themselves to fight each other.
Most modern antibiotics are derived fromof this set, further substances were synthesized into more powerful forms. The problem is that over time, bacteria develop resistance to these drugs, and new ones need to be created. In recent decades, progress has slowed dramatically as the easiest bacteria to work with is starting to run out. As a result, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are becoming one of the world's biggest threats.
To speed up the search for new antibiotics,researchers have used algorithms to explore clusters of biosynthetic genes. These are groups of genes that code for a number of proteins. The latter can potentially have antibacterial properties, but there are so many of them that it will not work to sort through manually.
The result was one particularly promising compound, which the team named cilagicine.
In laboratory tests, cilagicine could killbacteria, including several strains resistant to existing antibiotics. Importantly, it did not harm human cells and could treat bacterial infections in live mice. But most impressively, it even managed to kill the bacteria that the researchers had specifically engineered to resist the drug.
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