WISCONSIN/UPPER PENINSULA MICHIGAN Novel Lipopeptide-Like Antibiotics from Xenorhabdus Szentirmaii

Overview

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the top 10 global public health threats. T o combat this global health threat, it requires new antimicrobial drugs from new natural sources. The bacterial genus Xenorhabdus is a new resource for the discovery of novel antibiotics. The antimicrobial compounds of Xenorhabdus species are primarily produced by non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS) and polyketide synthetase (PKS) genes. Here, we focus our studies on Xenorhabdus szentirmaii, which produces many antimicrobial compounds effective against a variety of microbial species including animal, and fungal pathogens. We showed that X. szentirmaii primarily produced more potent antimicrobial compounds during the stationary phase. We also showed that production of antimicrobial compounds depended on the function of phosphopantetheinyl transferase (PPT ase) encoded by the gene ngrA. From a large-scale genome analysis, we showed that X. szentirmaii contains 17 NRPS/ PKS genes. We also separated the antimicrobial compounds into methanol and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) fractions. The liquid chromatography-mass spectrometric (LC-MS) of the methanol fraction showed that it contains a wide range of low-to-high-abundance compounds (e.g., peptides, amino acids, lipids, nucleotides, etc.) with a molecular weight ranging from 50 to 2,000 Da. The antimicrobial compounds in DMSO are heat stable and are likely a mixture of lipopeptides that attenuate the pathogenic antibiotic-resistant microorganisms. Collectively, our studies identified novel lipopeptide-like antibiotics from Xenorhabdus szentirmaii.

Competition history

• JSHS 2023 Category not listed

Resources

• National JSHS abstract book ↗

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