Scientists and researchers were able to discover a new antibiotic which has the potential to fight drug-resistant bacteria and to cure a bacterial infection. The said study was conducted at the Rutgers University-New Brunswick and was also sponsored by the biotechnology company NAICONS Srl.
It was also made known that the new antibiotic came from a microbe found in a soil sample from Italy. This microbe was discovered when the researchers screened the microbes from the soil samples.
According to Phys.org, the scientists noticed that the new antibiotic was able to kill a wide range of drug-sensitive and drug-resistant bacteria in the test tube. Moreover, they also observed that this antibiotic was able to cure the bacterial infections in mice.
The research featuring the discovery of the new antibiotic was published in Cell and this presented another breakthrough in science and medicine. The medical experts hoped that this new antibiotic will lead to the treatment of diseases caused by drug-resistant bacteria.
Researchers were able to study pseudouridimycin which then inhibited the bacterial RNA polymerase. It was then found out that thus inhibited using a different binding site as well as a mechanism than rifampin, an antibacterial drug which is also known to stop the said enzyme.
Then in the course of the study, it was observed that the pseudouridimycin shows no cross-resistance with rifampin. In fact, this worked well and effectively when it was administered together with rifampin. The most striking part of the study was when it was noticed that the pseudouridimycin had a resistance rate that was even way too faster than the resistance rate of rifampin.
Apart from that, the researchers also discovered that the pseudouridimycin appeared like the nucleoside triphosphate or the NTP which is being used by the bacterial RNA polymerase to synthesize RNA. In fact, this pseudouridimycin never separated from the NTP binding site which was then helpful in stopping NTPs from further developing.
This discovery of the new antibiotic which is proven effective against drug-resistant bacteria showed how natural products work well in providing new antibiotics. In order to kill microbes, another microbe is needed and this takes years to develop.
