Biologists develop new method for discovering antibiotics

Science Daily: “Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have developed a revolutionary new method for identifying and characterizing antibiotics, an advance that could lead to the discovery of new antibiotics to treat antibiotic resistant bacteria. The researchers made their discovery by developing a way to perform the equivalent of an autopsy on bacterial cells. “This will provide a powerful new tool for identifying compounds that kill bacteria and determining how they work,” said Joseph Pogliano, a professor of biology at UC San Diego who headed the research team.”” – An “autopsy on bacterial cells”, how cool is that. This is a tremendous discovery as we’ve been slowly losing the war on bacteria for more than a decade. The last time I practiced “clinical pharmacy” was about six years ago and antibiotic resistance was a scary issue back then.

Journal reference:
Poochit Nonejuie, Michael Burkart, Kit Pogliano, and Joe Pogliano. Bacterial cytological profiling rapidly identifies the cellular pathways targeted by antibacterial molecules. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1311066110

(Image taken from The Microbiologist, where source is liked to CNN)