The sting in the tail: Chance finding could lead to new antibiotics
Thursday, July 4, 2013 - 06:00
in Biology & Nature
(Phys.org) —A whole new class of antibiotics could be possible after a chance discovery by academics at Newcastle University. In a paper published in the journal Molecular Microbiology, the team describe how they were studying a protein derived from E.coli bacteria, called Colicin N, which kills competing bacteria in a very efficient way. Just one molecule of this protein can kill a whole cell.