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Chemical biology

A sweet exchange

Many drugs isolated from microorganisms have complex molecular structures, making it difficult for chemists to modify them. But it seems that enzymes can provide a short cut to drug variants.

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Figure 1: Enzymatic swap of sugars between antibiotic scaffolds.

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Walsh, C. A sweet exchange. Nature 443, 285–286 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/443285a

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