Publication details
MB Pharma's Microbial Collection as a Source of New Enzybiotics
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | MB Pharma and FAGOFARMA are trying to build up a collection of microbes that could be a source of new antimicrobials. Not just phages from this collection, killing strains of Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumanii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Aeromonas salmonicida, Cutibacterium acnes etc., but also their specific enzymes such as peptidoglycan hydrolases could be used. Moreover, genes encoding bacteriocins, bacterial cell wall-degrading enzymes and prophage endolysins were found in the genomes of clinical bacterial isolates and propagation strains from the collection. All these enzymes could be used as enzybiotics – a tool to fight microbial infections. More than 40 microbial genomes from the company's collection were automatically annotated using RAST and analysed. Hypothetical peptidoglycan hydrolases were found and compared with already identified endolysins. Tools such as HHpred, InterProScan and SMART were used to characterize their functional domains in more detail. Relatively low diversity of endolysins was observed in S. aureus, C. acnes or P. aeruginosa phages, whereas higher diversity was in K. pneumoniae phages. Some endolysins have been well described previously, such as LysK of S. aureus phage K, but others are novel. In addition, prophage endolysins were found in the bacterial genomes. In P. larvae, where only one endolysin was already described, a different hypothetical endolysin was identified in this work. Bacterial and phage genomes represent a great source of new antibacterial proteins whose activity needs to be proven experimentally. Several proteins, which could be used as enzybiotics, were identified in this research. Their modifications, such as addition of tags for destabilization and transmembrane transfer, could improve their activity, especially against Gram-negative bacteria. |