Engineered E.coli Can Produce New Forms Of Antibiotics

According to the research paper published in the journal Science Advances, engineered strains of the gram negative bacteria, Escherichia coli, can produce new forms of the antibiotic erythromycin. Three out of these forms have shown promising results, providing hope against the fight with drug-resistant bacteria. The study hold lots of clinical importance since the rise in incidence of antimicrobial drug resistance. Erythromycin is a wide spectrum antibiotic belonging to the macrolide class of drugs used to treat a variety of illnesses, such as pneumonia ,whooping cough, skin and urinary tract infections.

The new study, led by Blaine A. Pfeifer, an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering in the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, including the first author Guojian Zhang, Yi Li and Lei Fang, from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, has successfully reported that the three new types of erythromycin that were formed were able to kill the bacteria, Bacillus subtilis, which was originally resistant to the original erythromycin clinically used to treat its infection.

Pfeifer has been studying how to engineer E. coli to generate new varieties of erythromycin for more than a decade but only now was he and his team able to harnessing E. coli to synthesise dozens of new forms of the drug which are structurally different from existing versions. He says, “We’re focused on trying to come up with new antibiotics that can overcome antibiotic resistance, and we see this as an important step forward. We have not only created new analogues of erythromycin, but also developed a platform for using E. coli to produce the drug. This opens the door for additional engineering possibilities in the future; it could lead to even more new forms of the drug.”

E.coli seem to be like the best option for the researchers since it grows rapidly, thereby speeding up the process of experimental study and facilitates the upscale production of drugs. Also, it is easier to genetically engineer the bacteria since it relatively accepts new genes more. Pfeifer's team in the lab built new varieties of erythromycin by manipulating and combining the three basic building blocks called metabolic precursors which created the end products that deviated slightly from rest.

Pfeifer concludes that “The system we've created is surprisingly flexible, and that's one of the great things about it. We have established a platform for using E. coli to produce erythromycin, and now that we've got it, we can start altering it in new ways.”

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