MraY–antibiotic complex reveals details of tunicamycin mode of action
Hakulinen J.K., Hering J., Brändén G., Chen H., Snijder A., Ek M., Johansson K
Published online– PMID: 28068312 DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.2270
ABSTRACT
The rapid increase of antibiotic resistance has created an urgent need to develop novel antimicrobial agents.
Here we describe the crystal structure of the promising bacterial target phospho-N-acetylmuramoyl-pentapeptide translocase (MraY) in complex with the nucleoside antibiotic tunicamycin.
The structure not only reveals the mode of action of several related natural-product antibiotics but also gives an indication on the binding mode of the MraY UDP-MurNAc-pentapeptide and undecaprenyl-phosphate substrates.