Eleftheria Teixobacti

In the 1940s, antibiotics were widely introduced as a cure for common types of diseases. However, some microbes were able to resist the impacts of these drugs, in other words, the pathogen remained alive. In order to help resolve the crisis, antibiotics were found through screenings of soil microorganisms. However, soil microorganism’s antibiotics were depleted by the 1960s and their antibiotic effects were unable to be replicated through synthesis. In this experiment, the researchers developed methods to cultivate uncultured organisms where they originated by using specific growth factors such as iron-chelating siderophores, to help the soil grow. Through this successful experiment, the researchers were able to find a new antibiotic that is now called …show more content…
This created a diffusion process that pumped growth factors and nutrients through the chambers into the isolated soil sample allowing the isolated uncultured bacteria to grow. After a colony was produced it was screened for antimicrobial activity on plates containing S. aureus. The screening research found that a beta-proteobacteria named Eleftheria terrae showed good activity. However, 16S rDNA and in silico DNA/DNA hybridization showed the researchers that the organism was related to the known genus Aquabacteria, a Gram-negative organism which is not an antibiotic producer. Conversely, when researchers used mass spectrometry on the sample, they found that part of it had an unusual molecular mass of 1,242 Da. This portion of the sample was isolated and the structure was looked at closer through the use of NMR spectroscopy and advanced Marfey’s analysis. Through these techniques they were able to find out that this now isolated part of the molecule is a depsipeptide and that the molecule is composed of enduracididine, methylphenylalanine, and four D-amino