Publications by authors named "Gregory M Cook"

Article Synopsis
  • Drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis, especially mutants resistant to isoniazid, creates significant global health challenges due to mutations in the katG gene, affecting a crucial enzyme.
  • Researchers employed CRISPRi, transcriptomics, and metabolomics to identify metabolic and transcriptional changes in an isoniazid-resistant katG mutant, revealing new weaknesses in processes like respiration and ribosome biogenesis.
  • The study indicates that these identified vulnerabilities could be targeted for therapeutic strategies, offering potential improvements in treatment effectiveness against drug-resistant tuberculosis strains.
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  • Drug-resistant infections are a major health issue, prompting the need for new antibiotics, particularly targeting mycobacterial SDH, which is crucial for energy production and growth in these bacteria.
  • Researchers used biochemical screening and advanced computational methods to find several compounds that inhibit mycobacterial SDH, showing effectiveness against both regular and drug-resistant strains.
  • The study highlights that these SDH inhibitors disrupt mycobacterial metabolism and can enhance the effectiveness of other treatments while helping to prevent the development of resistance.
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Tuberculosis remains a leading cause of death by infectious disease. The long treatment regimen and the spread of drug-resistant strains of the causative agent Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) necessitates the development of new treatment options. In a phenotypic screen, nitrofuran-resorufin conjugate 1 was identified as a potent sub-micromolar inhibitor of whole cell Mtb.

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Reconstructing the evolutionary origins of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of human tuberculosis, has helped identify bacterial factors that have led to the tubercle bacillus becoming such a formidable human pathogen. Here we report the discovery and detailed characterization of an exceedingly slow growing mycobacterium that is closely related to M. tuberculosis for which we have proposed the species name Mycobacterium spongiae sp.

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Synergistic interactions between chemical inhibitors, whilst informative, can be difficult to interpret, as chemical inhibitors can often have multiple targets, many of which can be unknown. Here, using multiplexed transcriptional repression, we have validated that the simultaneous repression of glutamate racemase and alanine racemase has a synergistic interaction in . This confirms prior observations from chemical interaction studies and highlights the potential of targeting multiple enzymes involved in mycobacterial cell wall synthesis.

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Lipopeptides are an important class of biomolecules for drug development. Compared with conventional acylation, a chemoselective lipidation strategy offers a more efficient strategy for late-stage structural derivatisation of a peptide scaffold. It provides access to chemically diverse compounds possessing intriguing and non-native moieties.

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Discovered in the 1920s, cytochrome is a terminal oxidase that has received renewed attention as a drug target since its atomic structure was first determined in 2016. Only found in prokaryotes, we study it here as a drug target for (). Most previous drug discovery efforts toward cytochrome have involved analogues of the canonical substrate quinone, known as Aurachin D.

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Background: A limited ability to eliminate drug-resistant strains of is a major contributor to the morbidity of TB. Complicating this problem, little is known about how drug resistance-conferring mutations alter the ability of to tolerate antibiotic killing. Here, we investigated if drug-resistant strains of have an altered ability to tolerate killing by cell wall-targeting inhibitors.

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Testing antimicrobial sensitivity is limited to schizont maturation assays, which preclude determining the IC50s of delayed action antimalarials such as doxycycline. Using as a model for , we determined the physiologically significant delayed death effect induced by doxycycline [IC, 1,401 ± 607 nM]. As expected, IC to chloroquine (20.

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The brevicidines represent a novel class of nonribosomal antimicrobial peptides that possess remarkable potency and selectivity toward highly problematic and resistant Gram-negative pathogenic bacteria. A recently discovered member of the brevicidine family, coined brevicidine B (), comprises a single amino acid substitution (from d-Tyr to d-Phe) in the amino acid sequence of the linear moiety of brevicidine () and was reported to exhibit broader antimicrobial activity against both Gram-negative (MIC = 2-4 μgmL) and Gram-positive (MIC = 2-8 μgmL) pathogens. Encouraged by this, we herein report the first total synthesis of the proposed structure of brevicidine B (), building on our previously reported synthetic strategy to access brevicidine ().

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Covalent probes coupled with chemical proteomics represent a powerful method for investigating small molecule and protein interactions. However, the creation of a reactive warhead within various ligands to form covalent probes has been a major obstacle. Herein, we report a convenient and robust process to assemble a unique electrophile, an α-acyloxyenamide, through a one-step late-stage coupling reaction.

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Mycobacterial bioenergetics is a validated target space for antitubercular drug development. Here, we identify BB2-50F, a 6-substituted 5-(N,N-hexamethylene)amiloride derivative as a potent, multi-targeting bioenergetic inhibitor of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We show that BB2-50F rapidly sterilizes both replicating and non-replicating cultures of M.

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Fluoroquinolones (FQs) play a key role in the treatment regimens against tuberculosis and non-tuberculous mycobacterial infections. However, there are significant differences in the sensitivities of different mycobacteria to FQs. In this study, we proved that this is associated with the polymorphism at amino acid 17 of quinolone resistance-determining region of Gyrase A by gene editing.

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Antimicrobial tolerance is the ability of a microbial population to survive, but not proliferate, during antimicrobial exposure. Significantly, it has been shown to precede the development of bona fide antimicrobial resistance. We have previously identified the two-component system CroRS as a critical regulator of tolerance to antimicrobials like teixobactin in the bacterial pathogen Enterococcus faecalis.

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The bioenergetic mechanisms by which Mycobacterium tuberculosis survives hypoxia are poorly understood. Current models assume that the bacterium shifts to an alternate electron acceptor or fermentation to maintain membrane potential and ATP synthesis. Counterintuitively, we find here that oxygen itself is the principal terminal electron acceptor during hypoxic dormancy.

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The increasing incidence of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis has diminished the efficacy of almost all available antibiotics, complicating efforts to combat the spread of this global health burden. Alongside the development of new drugs, optimised drug combinations are needed to improve treatment success and prevent the further spread of antibiotic resistance. Typically, antibiotic resistance leads to reduced sensitivity, yet in some cases the evolution of drug resistance can lead to enhanced sensitivity to unrelated drugs.

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Article Synopsis
  • Diverse aerobic bacteria can use atmospheric hydrogen (H) as a key energy source for growth, affecting atmospheric composition, enhancing soil biodiversity, and supporting life in extreme environments.* -
  • Researchers studied the structure and mechanism of the Mycobacterium smegmatis hydrogenase Huc, which efficiently oxidizes atmospheric H without being hindered by oxygen (O), by using specialized gas channels to favor H and employing iron-sulfur clusters to make the reaction energetically viable.* -
  • The Huc enzyme forms a large complex that interacts with membrane-associated components to reduce menaquinone, providing insights into the important ecological process of atmospheric H oxidation, which could lead to new catalytic technologies.*
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Article Synopsis
  • Mycobacterial bioenergetics is a promising target for new anti-tuberculosis drugs due to its importance in energy generation and bacteria survival.
  • The study involved modifying naphthoquinoneimidazoles by adding a trialkylphosphonium cation to enhance their antimycobacterial activity through changes in the structure.
  • The most effective compound showed a strong selectivity index and bactericidal action by causing rapid depolarization of bacterial membranes, leading to decreased ATP levels and maintaining excellent antibacterial properties.
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With the post-antibiotic era rapidly approaching, many have turned their attention to developing new treatments, often by structural modification of existing antibiotics. Polymyxins, a family of lipopeptide antibiotics that are used as a last line of defense in the clinic, have recently developed resistance and exhibit significant nephrotoxicity issues. Using thiol-ene chemistry, the facile preparation of six unique S-lipidated building blocks was demonstrated and used to generate lipopeptide mimetics upon incorporation into solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS).

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The cytochrome bcc-aa oxidase (Cyt-bcc) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is a promising anti-tuberculosis target. However, when Cyt-bcc is inhibited, cytochrome bd terminal oxidase (Cyt-bd) can still maintain the activity of the respiratory chain and drive ATP synthesis. Through virtual screening and biological validation, we discovered two FDA-approved drugs, ivacaftor and roquinimex, exhibited moderate binding affinity to Cyt-bd.

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A revised total synthesis of aurachin D (), an isoprenoid quinolone alkaloid that targets () cytochrome (cyt-) oxidase, was accomplished using an oxazoline ring-opening reaction. The ring opening enabled access to a range of electron-poor analogues, while electron-rich analogues could be prepared using the Conrad-Limpach reaction. The aryl-substituted and side-chain-modified aurachin D analogues were screened for inhibition of cyt- oxidase and growth inhibition of .

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We report here the complete genome sequence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain Colonial S-type 1 (CS1), which has been responsible for ongoing outbreaks of tuberculosis in New Zealand over the past 30 years. CS1 appears to be highly transmissible, with greater rates of progression to active disease, compared to other circulating M. tuberculosis strains; therefore, comparison of its genomic content is of interest.

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Objective: Rifampicin (RIF)-resistance, a surrogate marker for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), is mediated by mutations in the gene. We aimed to investigate the prevalence of mutations pattern in the entire gene of clinical isolates and their association with resistance level to RIF.

Methods: Among 465 clinical isolates collected from the Guangzhou Chest Hospital, drug-susceptibility of 175 confirmed strains was performed via the proportion method and Bactec MGIT 960 system.

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Bacteria have developed resistance against every antimicrobial in clinical use at an alarming rate. There is a critical need for more effective use of antimicrobials to both extend their shelf life and prevent resistance from arising. Significantly, antimicrobial tolerance, i.

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