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A colony of Streptomyces coelicolor bacteria secretes an antibiotic compound (red) into the surrounding medium.Credit: Dr Jeremy Burgess\/Science Photo Library<\/p>\n
By studying the process through which a soil bacterium naturally produces a well-known drug, scientists have discovered a powerful antibiotic that could help to fight drug-resistant infections.<\/p>\n
In experiments described in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on Monday1<\/a>, the team studied the multi-step pathway that the bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor uses to make the antibiotic methylenomycin A, which was first identified in 19652<\/a>,3<\/a>. They discovered an intermediate compound \u2014 called premethylenomycin C lactone \u2014 whose antimicrobial activity was 100 times stronger than that of the final product. Tiny doses of it killed strains of bacteria known to cause hard-to-treat infections.<\/p>\n Five ways science is tackling the antibiotic resistance crisis<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The discovery was a \u2018surprise\u2019, says study co-author Gregory Challis, a chemical biologist at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK. \u201cAs humans, we anticipate that evolution perfects the end product, and so you\u2019d expect the final molecule to be the best antibiotic, and the intermediates to be less potent,\u201d he says. But the finding \u201cis a great example of what a \u2018blind watchmaker\u2019 evolution is. And it\u2019s a good way of exemplifying it in a very molecular way,\u201d adds Challis.<\/p>\n Antimicrobial resistance<\/a> is a growing threat, projected to cause 39 million deaths worldwide over the next 25 years. Researchers say that the discovery of a potent antimicrobial compound might lead to fresh drugs to tackle resistance.<\/p>\n The work underscores \u201cthe potential of such studies to identify new bioactive chemical scaffolds from \u2018old\u2019 pathways\u201d, says Gerard Wright, a biochemist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.<\/p>\n Accidental discovery<\/p>\n In 2006, Challis and his colleagues began studying the molecular pathway through which Streptomyces coelicolor produces methylenomycin A. To do this, they deleted the genes encoding enzymes involved in each step, one by one. Their work built on earlier efforts in 2002 to sequence the bacterium\u2019s genome4<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/d41586-025-03595-3_27689634.jpg\"\/)
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