{"id":242968,"date":"2026-08-20T21:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T02:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/how-antibiotics-work-inhibiting-rna-polymerase"},"modified":"2026-08-20T21:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T02:06:10","slug":"how-antibiotics-work-inhibiting-rna-polymerase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/how-antibiotics-work-inhibiting-rna-polymerase","title":{"rendered":"How antibiotics work inhibiting RNA polymerase?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-antibiotics-work-inhibiting-rna-polymerase.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists have long been fascinated by two promising classes of antibiotics that disable RNA polymerase (RNAP). They knew that these drugs could grind gene expression to a halt in several pathogens, including the bacterium behind tuberculosis, by binding to specific locations in the RNAP. But despite decades of study, a key question remained: what process are the drugs actually targeting?<\/p>\n<p>Now, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2609228123\">a new paper in <i>PNAS<\/i><\/a> solves that mystery and simultaneously uncovers a new element of basic biology. Using these antibiotics as tools to clarify the finer points of RNAP function, the researchers discovered that the enzyme works only if a certain moving part briefly swings into place to stabilize RNA synthesis\u2014and that these drugs disable the enzyme by preventing that motion. The findings reveal a previously unknown mechanism of RNA synthesis shared across diverse forms of life and lay the groundwork for developing next-generation antibiotics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s sort of a two-for-one,\u201d says the senior author. \u201cWe now know how these inhibitors work, and the inhibitors also revealed a conformational change in the active site that we didn\u2019t know was important.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have long been fascinated by two promising classes of antibiotics that disable RNA polymerase (RNAP). They knew that these drugs could grind gene expression to a halt in several pathogens, including the bacterium behind tuberculosis, by binding to specific locations in the RNAP. But despite decades of study, a key question remained: what process [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}