Did you know that not all types of bacteria in this world are harmful to humans? Some bacteria can be beneficial such as those used for the production of cheese and yogurt. Furthermore, these tiny creatures could even potentially be used to manufacture antibiotics for human use.
Antibiotics are used to cure bacterial infections by killing bacteria. For example, penicillin saved thousands of people in the 19th century.
As Amazing as they Sound, Antibiotics are not a Permanent Solution
The over-usage of antibiotics results in bacteria that can build resistance and cause the medication to be ineffective. The World Health Organization announced: “A serious threat is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone” on the development of drug-resistant bacteria.
Once a type of bacteria develops a resistance to a specific antibiotic, other antibiotics must be used to treat the infection. For example, nitroimidazole is a drug found in antibiotics such as azomycin. Due to its low resistance by bacteria, it has been used extensively to treat bacteria that have developed resistance to certain antibiotics.
Nitroimidazole
Research Looking into Nitroimidazole
Dr. Jason Hedges and Dr. Katherine Ryan of the University of British Columbia took a look into finding new ways to synthesize nitroimidazole. Their recent publication in 2019 showed how they were able to convert an amino acid (a building block of proteins) into azomycin.
The researchers used bioinformatics, a data analysis tool, to find all previous work that has been done on this topic. Bioinformatic searches are performed on databases such as NCBI.
They found that back in 1953, azomycin was extracted from a strain of bacteria called Streptomyces eurocidicus. Furthermore, they found a specific gene in a separate strain of yeast called Streptomyces cattleya, which had similarities to S. eurocidicus.
The two researchers aimed to find new ways to synthesize nitroimidazole, and proposed to synthesize nitroimidazole from L-arginine. Once a pathway had been developed, their end goal was to synthesize and extract azomycin in S. cattleya.
Hedges and Ryan were able to develop a multi-step pathway for the conversion of L-arginine to nitroimidazole through experimentation. However, they were unable to detect azomycin in S. cattleya. They noted that the gene of interest was unable to synthesize azomycin, and a separate drug may have synthesized in its place.
Synthesize of nitroimidazole from L-Arginine
A Bright Future
The significance of this research transcends the synthesis of azomycin. Although they failed to detect azomycin in S. cattleya, their work provides a stepping stone for further research to be conducted. This study provides insight on new biosynthetic pathways which is important to those currently in the field of life sciences and pharmacology. Furthermore, this study expands people’s knowledge of bacteria engineering and the biosynthetic pathway of other antibiotics. It also provides information about future antibiotic observations.
Future researchers could test their synthetic pathway on other bacteria such as E. coli to determine if azomycin could be synthesized.
Reference:
Hedges, J. B.; Ryan, K. S. In Vitro Reconstitution of the Biosynthetic Pathway to the Nitroimidazole Antibiotic Azomycin. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 2019, 58 (34), 11647–11651.
-Adrian Emata/Jackson Kuan/Xinyu Gu/Yicheng Zhu
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