Many bacteria produce and secrete substances to compete against other bacteria. Now, a team of researchers from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), the University of Bonn and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) unveiled one of these substances called epilancin A37, which could potentially be used as an antibiotic, according to a study published in the ISME Journal.
Due to increasing antibiotic resistance, researchers are working hard to develop new antibacterial substances. Recent work focuses on a new group of substances produced by gram-positive bacteria, the lantibiotics. These are antimicrobial compounds that often are very specific. “Such compounds are highly interesting from a medical point of view, as they could specifically attack individual groups of organisms without affecting the entire bacterial flora, as is the case with broad-spectrum antibiotics, for example,” said Dr. Fabian Grein from the University of Bonn.
The team is working with a new lantibiotic, namely epilancin A37. Epilancin A37 is produced by a group of bacteria called staphylococci, and this compound acts against its main competitor, corynebacteria. “We were able to show that epilancins are widespread in staphylococci, which underlines their ecological importance,” said first author Jan-Samuel Puls, a doctoral student from the University of Bonn at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Microbiology at the UKB
The bulk of their work focussed on unveiling epilacin’s mechanism of action. “This specificity is presumably mediated by a very special mechanism of action that we were able to decipher in detail,” said Dr. Grein. In simple terms, epilancin A37 enters the corynebacterial cell without actually destroying it. It then accumulates inside the cell and eventually dissolves the cell membrane from the inside, killing the corynebacterium. “Our study shows how a specific mechanism of action can be used to specifically combat a single bacterial species. It therefore serves us as a ‘proof of concept'”, said Dr. Thomas Fließwasser from the Institute of Pharmaceutical Microbiology at the UKB, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bonn.
Puls J, Winnerling B, Power J, Krüger A, Brajtenbach D, Johnson M, Bilici K, Camus L, Fließwasser T, Schneider T, Sahl H, Ghosal D, Kubitscheck U, Heilbronner S, Grein F, Staphylococcus epidermidisbacteriocin A37 kills natural competitors with a unique mechanism of action, The ISME Journal, Volume 18, Issue 1, January 2024, wrae044, https://doi.org/10.1093/ismejo/wrae044