Nature's Way To Make the Lantibiotics
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[1] Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois, United States
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- Localización: Journal of chemical education, ISSN 0021-9584, Vol. 83, Nº 12, 2006, pág. 1769
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
Antibiotic resistance poses a serious threat for human health. Renewed effort towards discovery of new antibiotics is essential to ward off a widespread return of lethal infectious diseases to the developed world and to continue combating infectious diseases in the developing world. Traditionally, chemical education focuses on synthetic chemical means of producing pharmaceuticals. However, with the enormous advances in molecular biology techniques in the 1980s and genome sequence information in the 1990s, the use of nature's synthetic tools is on the rise as an important alternative avenue for production of drugs. This article focuses on one class of antimicrobial compounds, the lantibiotics, and discusses their biosynthetic pathways as well as their molecular mode of action. In the course of the review, the meaning of the terms regio-, chemo-, and stereoselectivity are discussed.
