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Natural products

Untwisting the antibiotic'ome

Microbial natural products and the specific subset with antibiotic activity, 'the antibiotic'ome', consist of a dizzying array of structures and exert their effects by many known modes of action. In this issue, Cociancich et al. describe a unique natural product that—along with a compound identified in a recent publication by Baumann et al.—defines a new antibacterial chemical scaffold that acts on a rarely hit target, DNA gyrase subunit A.

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Figure 1: New, exotic DNA gyrase inhibitors from the antibiotic'ome.

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Correspondence to Nathan A Magarvey.

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Johnston, C., Magarvey, N. Untwisting the antibiotic'ome. Nat Chem Biol 11, 177–178 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.1757

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