| METHOD |
Most antibacterials inhibit a bacterial enzyme or pathway not shared by the human host. Authors are bucking that trend by taking another look at universal biosynthetic pathways for wide-spectrum antibacterial targets. Authors have compiled a list of all of the essential genes in the bacterium ~Escherichia coli~. With the help of publicly available genomic information from various microbial pathogens, the researchers are using their list to reconstruct the pathogens` essential metabolic pathways. By exploiting subtle differences between those pathways conserved across many pathogens & their human counterparts, the team identified a number of potential antibacterial targets involved in the biosynthesis of the essential adenylate cofactors nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), coenzyme A (CoA), & flavin adenine dinucleotide. The 3 distantly related adenylyltransferase enzymes required for each of these pathways look particularly promising. Indeed, knocking out the NAD or CoA enzyme is lethal to the model pathogen ~Staphylococcus aureus~, the team has shown
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