{"id":94308,"date":"2019-07-31T12:04:23","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T19:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/first-pictures-of-enzyme-that-drives-new-class-of-antibiotics"},"modified":"2019-07-31T12:04:23","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T19:04:23","slug":"first-pictures-of-enzyme-that-drives-new-class-of-antibiotics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/first-pictures-of-enzyme-that-drives-new-class-of-antibiotics","title":{"rendered":"First pictures of enzyme that drives new class of antibiotics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/first-pictures-of-enzyme-that-drives-new-class-of-antibiotics2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Understanding how antibiotic scaffolds are constructed in nature can help scientists prospect for new classes of antibiotics through DNA sequencing and genome mining. Researchers have used this knowledge to help solve the X-ray crystal structure of the enzyme that makes obafluorin\u2014a broad spectrum antibiotic agent made by a fluorescent strain of soil bacteria. The new work from Washington University in St. Louis and the University at Buffalo is published July 31 in the journal Nature Communications.<\/p>\n<p>A multi-part <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/enzyme\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">enzyme<\/a> called a nonribosomal peptide synthetase produces the highly reactive beta-lactone ring that is responsible for obafluorin\u2019s antimicrobial activity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObafluorin has a novel structure compared to all FDA-approved antibiotics,\u201d said Timothy Wencewicz, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts &amp; Sciences. \u201cIn the long term, we really need new structural classes of antibiotics that have never been contaminated by clinical resistance from established antibiotic classes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Understanding how antibiotic scaffolds are constructed in nature can help scientists prospect for new classes of antibiotics through DNA sequencing and genome mining. Researchers have used this knowledge to help solve the X-ray crystal structure of the enzyme that makes obafluorin\u2014a broad spectrum antibiotic agent made by a fluorescent strain of soil bacteria. The new [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94308","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\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}