Soil Bacteria For Antibiotics Gets A Second Look

In 1928 Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, which was subsequently developed into a medicine by Florey and Chain in the 1940s. The antibiotic was hailed as a 'miracle cure' and a golden age of drug discovery followed. However, frequent rediscovery of known natural products and technical challenges forced pharmaceutical companies to retreat and stop looking for new molecules. Big pharmacy companies gave up on soil bacteria as a source of antibiotics too soon, according to research published in the June issue of Microbiology. Scientists have been mining microbial genomes for new natural products that may have applications in the treatment of MRSA and cancer and have made some exciting discoveries. "Over the last eight years we have been looking for new natural products in the DNA sequence of the antibiotic-producing bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor," said Professor Gregory Challis from the University of Warwick. "In the last 15 years it became accepted that no new natural products remained to be discovered from these bacteria. Our work shows this widely-held view to be incorrect." read more

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