New method may produce better antibiotics

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Oct. 7 (UPI) -- A team of U.S. medical scientists has developed a potential new approach for the creation of more effective antibiotics.

"As bacteria become more resistant to our current classes of antibiotics, there also has been a general lack of new targets for developing novel antibiotics," said University of Virginia Professor John Bushweller, who led the study. "Our discovery provides a starting point for a completely novel class of antibiotics, acting via a different mechanism."

Bushweller and his team from the university's health system and Harvard Medical School determined the structure of a particular integral membrane enzyme called DsbB.

Bushweller said the new study marks the first time scientists have cracked the code required to solve a certain class of membrane protein structure by using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

"What this means is that not only did we establish NMR spectroscopy as a potent tool for the characterization of the structure, dynamics and function of integral membrane proteins, but we also discovered the DsbB enzyme is an exciting potential new target agent for the creation of novel antibiotics."

The research is reported in the Sept. 26 issue of the journal Molecular Cell.