Grant: Project Grant

Antibiotic resistance is fast becoming a global health crisis: disease-causing bacteria are no longer killed by existing antibiotics, and we urgently need new drugs to help treat infectious disease. Most antibiotics are made by bacteria called 'Streptomyces'. It turns out that Streptomyces have the ability to make far greater numbers of antibiotics than anyone has ever seen - the only problem being that most antibiotics are not made when Streptomyces are grown in the laboratory. We have discovered a protein that acts as a major roadblock for antibiotic production in Streptomyces: if you get rid of this protein, many new antibiotics are made. We are using this knowledge to turn on the production of new antibiotics in many Streptomyces (each one has unique antibiotic capabilities). Our findings have the potential to help deal with the impending antibiotic resistance crisis, and will provide tools that will enable future drug discovery.