While looking through some “Top Ten” lists of the various science stories and discoveries of 2014, I came across a paper, published in Cell in September, describing a new approach to the search for antimicrobials. The paper’s authors screened the vast amount of genomic data from the human microbiome project against known sequences to find genes with homology to existing small molecule drug candidates.

The authors reasoned that any genes that were common across many species would be more likely to affect conserved microbe:host or microbe:microbe interactions. Having identified a large group of these gene clusters, they then homed in on a subset that was commonly found in the microbiome of healthy individuals. As a proof-of-concept, they then identified and characterized a thiopeptide molecule produced by the bacterium Lactobacillus gasseri  and showed that it had the expected antimicrobial activity. The Cell paper was the first report of the characterization of any small molecule drug candidate isolated from the human microbiome. Continue reading “Mining Genomes for Antimicrobials”