This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. To address the growing problem of antibiotic resistance there is an important medical need to develop new antibacterials that work by novel mechanisms. This pilot proposal seeks to exploit myxobacteria as prolific producers of natural product antibiotics. Recent genomic and bioinformatic findings have highlighted this point as a stunning ~10 percent of myxobacterial genomes contain secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters. This proposal seeks to tackle a central enigma of antibiotic drug discovery?namely, that natural products are the leading source of antibiotics, yet their development is hindered by low fermentation yields and complex chemical structures that make synthesis difficult. To address these problems, our first goal will be to test the feasibility of our hypothesis that the predatory behavior of myxobacteria can be exploited to genetically select optimized producer strains. A focus of these studies is on the natural product antibiotic TA;a promising novel hybrid polyketide-peptide antibiotic shown to be safe and have broad-spectrum antibacterial activity. Studies are aimed at understanding the genetic network involved in regulating ta expression and generating overproducer strains. A second goal is focused on elucidating the mode of action for antibiotic TA. The long term focus of this project is to develop the biology of myxobacteria as a source of therapeutically promising natural products.
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