Vaginal microbe yields novel antibiotic
Date: 22.9.2014
Bacteria living on human bodies contain genes that are likely to code for a vast number of drug-like molecules — including a new antibiotic made by bacteria that live in the vagina.
The drug, lactocillin, hints at the untapped medical potential of this microbial landscape. “They have shown that there is a huge diverse potential of the microbiome for producing antimicrobial molecules,” says Marc Ouellette, a microbiologist at the University of Laval's Hospital Centre (CHUL) in Quebec, Canada, who was not involved in the research.
Studies have suggested that the composition of our microbiomes — the whole suite of bacteria living on our bodies — has huge impacts on our health, but it has been difficult to show exactly how this works.
Michael Fischbach, a microbiologist and chemist at the University of California, San Francisco, led a team that aimed to fill in those blanks. The researchers built a machine-learning algorithm, training a computer program to recognize genes that are already known to make small molecules that could act as drugs. Then they asked the program to hunt for similar genes in the human microbiome.
The search yielded thousands of these drug-making genes within microbes living on and in the body. Some are similar to drugs being tested in clinical trials, such as a class of antibiotics called thiopeptides.
