257-4 Discovery of a New Class of Antibiotic in Natural Soils;.
See more from this Division: Special Sessions
See more from this Session: Symposium--Soils As the New Frontier in Antibiotic and Antibiotic Resistance Discovery
Abstract:
The uncultivated microorganisms represent >99% of microbial diversity in nature. This unexplored, and previously unavailable, biodiversity is arguably the single most promising resource for novel antibiotics, at least for now. To explore this resource, we designed and tested several novel cultivation methods sharing one basic idea: natural environment contains all the growth factors necessary for microbial growth, and so such environment could be used as the source of such factors. In one of the new devices, termed “isolation chip”, or ichip for short, individual microbial cells from soil are placed into an array of miniature diffusion chambers, which are then incubated in contact with the soil sample. We achieved microbial recovery orders of magnitude higher than in parallel experiments employing conventional cultivation. We also observed a significantly higher novelty of isolates grown in ichips. Ichip industrial application resulted in identification of several novel antimicrobials. One of them, teixobactin, represents a novel class of antibiotics and kills gram-positive bacteria with no detectable resistance.
See more from this Division: Special Sessions
See more from this Session: Symposium--Soils As the New Frontier in Antibiotic and Antibiotic Resistance Discovery