Synthetic Staph stopper

Using a new strategy to find anti-infectives from bacteria without needing to culture them or coax them to express specific genes, a team from The Rockefeller University has identified a class of small molecules active against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

The team, led by Associate Professor Sean Brady, described the two-part method in an October Nature Chemical Biology study. The strategy involves a computational algorithm that can predict the structures of bacterial gene products based on sequence information, and a method of chemical synthesis for cell-free production of the compounds...