New antibiotics from the microbial dark matter

New antibiotics from the microbial dark matter Air date: Wednesday, February 15, 2017, 3:00:00 PM Category: WALS - Wednesday Afternoon Lectures Runtime: 00:58:16 Description: NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series We are experiencing an antibiotic crisis: Our ability to discover novel compounds has diminished and pathogens go largely unchecked in acquiring and spreading resistance. The main source of antibiotics–soil actinomycetes–has been overmined. In chronic infections, the problem is compounded by the presence of dormant persister cells that are resistant to all antibiotics. As a result, chronic osteomyelitis or infections in patients with cystic fibrosis can be untreatable. About 99 percent of environmental microorganisms are uncultured. Dr. Lewis’s lab developed approaches for killing persister cells and growing uncultured bacteria. The lab found that this “microbial dark matter“ harbors novel antimicrobials that evolved to be essentially