Faster drug prospecting

Abstract

Over 60% of drugs are derived from natural products—chemicals made by living organisms like bacteria, fungi, and plants. But identifying and characterizing biologically active molecules in the complex chemical brew these organisms make can be a painstaking, yearslong process. By combining genome mining with microcrystal electron diffraction (microED), scientists have found what might be a faster way to identify drugs from natural products. Researchers led by University of California, Los Angeles, chemical biologist Yi Tang and California Institute of Technology organic chemist Hosea M. Nelson developed the prospecting process ( Nat. Chem. Biol. 2021, DOI: 10.1038/s41589-021-00834-2 ). The researchers comb through the DNA sequence of an interesting organism, looking for genes that are known to make enzymes responsible for constructing biomolecules. They then insert those genes into a host that they can grow in the lab. This host churns out those enzymes and the natural product of interest. “It’s a