Professor Chris Thomas
Scientists from the Universities of Birmingham and Bristol have discovered how marine bacteria join together two antibiotics they make independently to produce a potent chemical that can kill drug-resistant strains of the MRSA superbug. Working with Japanese pharmaceutical company Daiichi-Sankyo, and funded by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the researchers' work paves the way for the creation of new hybrid antibiotics that may help to solve the growing problem of bacterial infections that are resistant to essentially all antibiotics. The research is published online in the journal PLoS ONE. The team, comprising microbial geneticists from Birmingham and chemists from Bristol, determined the sequence of the complete DNA content of the marine bacterium that produces the new antibiotic, thiomarinol, owned by Daiichi-Sankyo. They then identified the genes responsible for making the antibiotic on the basis of their similarity to genes that make the related but less potent antibiotic, mupirocin, which is currently used to combat MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus). They found the genes are on a relatively small, separate DNA molecule called a plasmid, which is just big enough to carry the genes for making the antibiotic plus genes to allow the plasmid to replicate autonomously in the bacterium. The plasmid thus carries genes that make both the mupirocin-like antibiotic as well a second antibiotic, holomycin, and a gene responsible for joining both antibiotics together, forming a more potent molecule.
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