Genetic screen of soil microbes uncovers novel antibiotics

Abstract

Bacteria have long been a prolific source of potentially therapeutic natural products. But scientists estimate that only about 1% of bacteria can be grown in the lab, making most unavailable for drug discovery. As a result, scientists have largely abandoned screening microbes to find new antibiotics and other drugs. Sean F. Brady of Rockefeller University and coworkers now report an approach to natural product discovery that bypasses the need to culture bacteria (Nat. Microbiol. 2018, DOI: 10.1038/s41564-018-0110-1). With the method, the team discovered a new class of antibiotics called malacidins. The new study “counters the notion that soil bacteria are an exhausted source of natural products, and it opens the door to begin to explore the remaining 99% of microbial diversity that traditional culture-dependent approaches have missed,” says Steven G. Van Lanen of the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy. Brady and coworkers amplify and sequence bacterial DNA from environmental