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Projekt Druckansicht

Strukturbiologische und biochemische Untersuchungen des Bottromycin Biosyntheseweges und dessen biotechnische Nutzung

Fachliche Zuordnung Biochemie
Biophysik
Förderung Förderung von 2014 bis 2022
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 261144906
 
Erstellungsjahr 2021

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

Since their discovery almost a century ago, antibiotics have become indispensable for modern medicine and are a main contributor to the long and healthy lives we enjoy today. The major problem we are faced with in antibiotic therapy today is the increasingly rapid development of antimicrobial resistance. This challenge can only be overcome by a confluence of factors, including better and more restricted use of current antibiotics, but also the discovery of new antibiotics with a novel mode of action. Bottromycins fit this bill: they are cyclic peptide antibiotics, which address a thus far unexploited cellular target. As a result, they are effective against problematic human pathogens, such as vancomycin-resistant enterococci and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The major hurdle in the development of bottromycins is the exceptionally difficult total synthesis and the poor yields when attempts have been made to produce the compounds via bioengineering. We set out to attain a detailed understanding of bottromycin biosynthesis, using structural biology and biochemistry. We intended to translate these insights into a system for the production of novel bottromycin variants in sufficient quantities for small-scale biological testing. We have determined the crystal structures of five key biosynthetic enzymes and elucidated the mechanisms of six enzymes. This includes mechanistic work on hitherto unprecedented biochemical transformations. As a result of our work we now have a facile, two-pot biosynthesis of the bottromycin core scaffold with excellent yields. In the coming months we are going to further optimize the system to arrive at a true one-pot system compatible with high-throughput production of bottromycin derivatives for biological testing.

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