Researchers Find New Pathway to Thwart Antibiotic Resistance
Date: 25.6.2007
Researchers at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) have new information on the structure of a key enzyme in bacteria that could lead to improved antibiotics and less antibiotic resistance. In findings published today online in two complementary papers in Nature, the research team describe the differences in an enzyme called RNA polymerase in bacterial cells as opposed to human cells. These differences provide potential new targets for drug design.
“RNA polymerase is the key enzyme regulating the transfer of genetic information from DNA to RNA,” said Dmitry Vassylyev, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics and lead author of both papers. “All living organisms use this enzyme to transmit the instructions stored in genes (DNA) to messenger RNA (mRNA), which in turn communicates those instructions to the cells.”
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