New class of antibiotics

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As bacteria resistant to usually used antibiotics continue to increase in number, researchers keep searching for new sources of drugs. In this week's JBC, one potential new bactericide has been found in the tiny freshwater animal Hydra.

The protein identified by Joachim Grtzinger, Thomas Bosch and his colleagues at the University of Kiel, hydramacin-1, is unusual (and also clinically valuable) as it shares virtually no similarity with any other known antibacterial proteins except for two antimicrobials found in another ancient animal, the leech.

Hydramacin showed to be very effective though; in a series of laboratory laboratory tests, this protein could destroy a wide range of both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, including clinically-isolated drug-resistant breeds like Klebsiella oxytoca (a common cause of nosocomial infections). Hydramacin works by adhering to the bacterial surface, promoting the clumping of nearby bacteria, then disrupting the bacterial membrane.

Grtzinger and his team also determined the 3-D shape of hydramacin-1, which revealed that it most closely resembled a superfamily of proteins found in scorpion venom; within this large group, they propose that hydramacin and the two leech proteins are members of a newly designated family called the macins.


Posted by: Mark    Source