Groundbreaking discovery explains why some bacteria have been able to defend against phage therapy, and opens new ways for the medical community to overcome existing challenges Singapore, 6 May 2020 – Researchers from Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, have discovered a new anti-phage defence mechanism found in some...
Researchers at McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine have made important strides in understanding the functioning of enzymes that play an integral role in the production of antibiotics and other therapeutics. Their findings are published in Science. “Many of the medicines that we rely on today are natural products, made by the Earth’s flora,” explains Dr....
Reviewed by James Ives, M.Psych. (Editor) One of the WHO’s three critical priority pathogens, Acinetobacter baumannii, for which new antibiotics are urgently needed is one step closer to being tackled, as researchers from the Department of Chemistry – University of Warwick have made a breakthrough in understanding the enzymes that assemble the antibiotic enacyloxin. Acinetobacter...
CRISPR gene editing is a technique famous for its potential to edit the genomes of living organisms, including humans. Using the technique, it may be possible to reverse congenital conditions, kill off viruses, and do things previously only imagined. But now it has been employed to do something else entirely, and that is to give...
Many enzymatic processes involve a mechanism in which reaction intermediates are covalently attached to the enzyme’s active site. A strategy has been devised that enables mimics of these intermediates to be visualized. Andrew M. Gulick Enzyme structure and function are routinely studied by altering the DNA that encodes the enzyme, thus replacing specific amino-acid residues in the enzyme with other...
New strategies in the battle against antibiotic resistance TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH (TUM) More and more bacteria are resistant to available antibiotics. A team of chemists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) now presents a new approach: they have identified important enzymes in the metabolism of staphylococci. Blocking these enzymes in a targeted manner...
UT Austin Engineers develop new way to treat cancer using enzyme therapy UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN AUSTIN, Texas — Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a new approach to treating cancer using enzyme therapy. The enzyme, PEG-KYNase, does not directly kill cancer cells but instead empowers the immune system to...
Catalysts working in pairs can promote more-effective reactions than can the same catalysts used sequentially. The coupling of an enzyme with a light-activated catalyst offers great potential for organic synthesis. Nicholas J. Turner The development of catalytic reactions is a dominant theme in chemistry, especially in industry, where major efforts are underway to develop large-scale...
TU Graz researchers set milestone in biocatalysis research GRAZ UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY TU Graz researchers managed for the first time ever to ‘retrain’ an enzyme to build ring-shaped molecular structures instead of performing its natural task of reducing double bonds. The work was published in Angewandte Chemie, and is relevant for the production of pharmaceuticals and plant protection products. IMAGE: KATHRIN HECKENBICHLER...
