Scientists Discover Plant Toxin Which Could Create New Antibacterial Drugs

A new way to create antibacterial drugs and antibiotics has been discovered by a team of British, German, and Polish scientists.

(Photo: Garima Sadhwani/FIT)

A new way to create antibacterial drugs and antibiotics has been discovered by a team of British, German, and Polish scientists.

In a study, titled Molecular Mechanism of Topoisomerase Poisoning by the Peptide Antibiotic Albicidin, published in the Nature Catalysis journal last week, the researchers said that albicidin, the antibiotic found in Xanthomonas Albilineans, dispatches and attacks bacteria in a totally unique way, which can be used in antibacterial drugs now.

How Albicidin Works: The peptide antibiotic albicidin “employs a dual binding mechanism” preventing the DNA gyrase from completing its cycle. The study said,

“The extraordinary promiscuity of the DNA-intercalating region of albicidins and their excellent performance against fluoroquinolone-resistant bacteria holds great promise for the development of last-resort antibiotics.”

This discovery comes at an important time because the human body has developed resistance to antibiotics because of their overuse. This is a major threat to global public health, the World Health Organization has warned time and time again. Antibiotic resistance even led to over a million fatalities in 2019, The Guardian had reported.

What Experts Say: Dmitry Ghilarov, one of the authors of the study, was quoted by The Guardian as saying,

“We could not elicit any resistance towards albicidin in the laboratory. That is why we are really excited – because we think it will be very hard for bacteria to evolve resistance against albicidin-derived antibiotics.”

He added that albicidin was previously not used as an antibacterial because its effects on the human body were not known. But, he went on to say, “Now we have a structural understanding, we can create modifications of albicidin to improve its efficacy and pharmacological properties.”

The Next Step: The authors of the study suggest that while it might take years to develop a “clinically effective version” of the antibiotic, governments need to step in and incentivise this as more research is needed for this.