Revolutionizing Antibiotics: How MIT’s Water-Soluble Enzymes Could Change the Game

Scientists created a water-soluble version of an important bacterial enzyme, which can now be used in drug screens to identify new antibiotics.

MIT researchers have engineered a water-soluble histidine kinase, a bacterial enzyme that could lead to a new class of antibiotics aimed at addressing the growing issue of antibiotic resistance. This development also paves the way for using similar techniques to mitigate environmental issues like greenhouse gas emissions.

Histidine Kinase as an Antibiotic Target
A bacterial enzyme called histidine kinase is a promising target for new classes of antibiotics. However, it has been difficult to develop drugs that target this enzyme, because it is a “hydrophobic” protein that loses its structure once removed from its normal location in the cell membrane.