This class of microbes is an underexploited source of new bioactive compounds

Demand for new kinds of antibiotics is surging, as drug-resistant and emerging infections are becoming an increasingly serious global health threat. Researchers are racing to reexamine certain microbes that serve as one of our most successful sources of therapeutics: the…

When stubborn bugs refuse to make drugs

An untapped trove of desirable drug-like molecules is hidden in the genomes of Streptomyces bacteria — the same bacteria responsible for the first bacterial antibiotics to treat tuberculosis back in the 1940s. Isolating them, however, has proved challenging. Now, biologists at Washington University in St. Louis are using comparative metabologenomics to try to uncover what may be “silencing” Streptomyces and preventing it from producing desirable compounds encoded by its genes.

Silver Attacks Bacteria, Gets ‘Consumed’

As antibiotic-resistant bacteria become more prevalent, silver has seen steep growth in its use in things like antibacterial coatings. Still, a better understanding can provide clues on how to best apply it. In Chemical Physics Reviews, researchers monitored the interaction of silver nanoparticles with a nearby E. coli culture and found the silver undergoes several dramatic changes. Most notably, the E. coli cells caused substantial transformations in the size and shape of the silver particles.