Maulik Thaker

The Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database

ABSTRACT The field of antibiotic drug discovery and the monitoring of new antibiotic resistance elements have yet to fully exploit the power of the genome revolution. Despite the fact that the first genomes sequenced of free living organisms were those of bacteria, there have been few specialized bioinformatic tools developed to mine the growing amount of genomic data associated with pathogens. In particular, there are few tools to study the genetics and genomics of antibiotic resistance and how it impacts bacterial populations, ecology, and the clinic. We have initiated development of such tools in the form of the Comprehensive Antibiotic Research Database (CARD; http://arpcard.mcmaster.ca). The CARD integrates disparate molecular and sequence data, provides a unique organizing principle in the form of the Antibiotic Resistance Ontology (ARO), and can quickly identify putative antibiotic resistance genes in new unannotated genome sequences. This unique platform provides an informatic tool that bridges antibiotic resistance concerns in health care, agriculture, and the environment.

The tetracycline resistome

Resistance to tetracycline emerged soon after its discovery six decades ago. Extensive clinical and non-clinical uses of this class of antibiotic over the years have combined to select for a large number of resistant determinants, collectively termed the tetracycline resistome. In order to impart resistance, microbes use different molecular mechanisms including target protection, active efflux, and enzymatic degradation. A deeper understanding of the structure, mechanism, and regulation of the genes and proteins associated with tetracycline resistance will contribute to the development of tetracycline derivatives that overcome resistance. Newer generations of tetracyclines derived from engineering of biosynthetic genetic programs, semi-synthesis, and in particular recent developments in their chemical synthesis, together with a growing understanding of resistance, will serve to retain this class of antibiotic to combat pathogens.

Identifying producers of antibacterial compounds by screening for antibiotic resistance

Microbially derived natural products are major sources of antibiotics and other medicines, but discovering new antibiotic scaffolds and increasing the chemical diversity of existing ones are formidable challenges. We have designed a screen to exploit the self-protection mechanism of antibiotic producers to enrich microbial libraries for producers of selected antibiotic scaffolds. Using resistance as a discriminating criterion we increased the discovery rate of producers of both glycopeptide and ansamycin antibacterial compounds by several orders of magnitude in comparison with historical hit rates. Applying a phylogeny-based screening filter for biosynthetic genes enabled the binning of producers of distinct scaffolds and resulted in the discovery of a glycopeptide antibacterial compound, pekiskomycin, with an unusual peptide scaffold. This strategy provides a means to readily sample the chemical diversity available in microbes and offers an efficient strategy for rapid discovery of microbial natural products and their associated biosynthetic enzymes.

Glycopeptide antibiotic biosynthesis

Glycopeptides such as vancomycin, teicoplanin and telavancin are essential for treating infections caused by Gram-positive bacteria. Unfortunately, the dwindled pipeline of new antibiotics into the market and the emergence of glycopeptide-resistant enterococci and other resistant bacteria are increasingly making effective antibiotic treatment difficult. We have now learned a great deal about how bacteria produce antibiotics. This information can be exploited to develop the next generation of antimicrobials. The biosynthesis of glycopeptides via nonribosomal peptide assembly and unusual amino acid synthesis, crosslinking and tailoring enzymes gives rise to intricate chemical structures that target the bacterial cell wall. This review seeks to describe recent advances in our understanding of both biosynthesis and resistance of these important antibiotics.

Induction of antimicrobial activities in heterologous streptomycetes using alleles of the Streptomyces coelicolor gene absA1

The bacterial genus Streptomyces is endowed with a remarkable secondary metabolism that generates an enormous number of bioactive small molecules. Many of these genetically encoded small molecules are used as antibiotics, anticancer agents and as other clinically relevant therapeutics. The rise of resistant pathogens has led to calls for renewed efforts to identify antimicrobial activities, including expanded screening of streptomycetes. Indeed, it is known that most strains encode >20 secondary metabolites and that many, perhaps most of these, have not been considered for their possible therapeutic use. One roadblock is that many strains do not express their secondary metabolic gene clusters efficiently under laboratory conditions. As one approach to this problem, we have used alleles of a pleiotropic regulator of secondary metabolism from Streptomyces coelicolor to activate secondary biosynthetic gene clusters in heterologous streptomycetes. In one case, we demonstrate the activation of pulvomycin production in S. flavopersicus, a metabolite not previously attributed to this species. We find that the absA1-engineered strains produced sufficient material for purification and characterization. As a result, we identified new, broad-spectrum antimicrobial activities for pulvomycin, including a potent antimicrobial activity against highly antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative and Gram-positive pathogens.

Opportunities for Synthetic Biology in Antibiotics: Expanding Glycopeptide Chemical Diversity

Synthetic biology offers a new path for the exploitation and improvement of natural products to address the growing crisis in antibiotic resistance. All antibiotics in clinical use are facing eventual obsolesce as a result of the evolution and dissemination of resistance mechanisms, yet there are few new drug leads forthcoming from the pharmaceutical sector. Natural products of microbial origin have proven over the past 70 years to be the wellspring of antimicrobial drugs. Harnessing synthetic biology thinking and strategies can provide new molecules and expand chemical diversity of known antibiotic scaffolds to provide much needed new drug leads. The glycopeptide antibiotics offer paradigmatic scaffolds suitable for such an approach. We review these strategies here using the glycopeptides as an example and demonstrate how synthetic biology can expand antibiotic chemical diversity to help address the growing resistance crisis.

Antibiotic resistance–mediated isolation of scaffold-specific natural product producers

For over half a century, actinomycetes have served as the most promising source of novel antibacterial scaffolds. However, over the years, there has been a decline in the discovery of new antibiotics from actinomycetes. This is partly due to the use of standard screening methods and platforms that result in the re-discovery of the same molecules. Thus, according to current estimates, the discovery of a new antibacterial requires screening of tens to hundreds of thousands of bacterial strains. We have devised a resistance-based antibacterial discovery platform by harnessing the innate self-protection mechanism of antibiotic producers. This protocol provides a detailed method for isolation of scaffold-specific antibacterial producers by isolating strains in the presence of a selective antibiotic. As a specific example, we describe isolation of glycopeptide antibiotic (GPA) producers from soil actinomycetes, using vancomycin as the antibiotic resistance filter. However, the protocol can be adapted to isolate diverse producers from various sources producing different scaffolds, by selecting an appropriate antibiotic as a screening filter. The protocol provides a solution for two major bottlenecks that impede the new drug discovery pipeline: low hit frequency and re-discovery of known molecules. The entire protocol, from soil collection to identification of putative antibacterial producers, takes about 6 weeks to complete.

Characterization of a Rifampin-Inactivating Glycosyltransferase from a Screen of Environmental Actinomycetes

ABSTRACT Identifying and understanding the collection of all antibiotic resistance determinants presented in the global microbiota, the antibiotic resistome, provides insight into the evolution of antibiotic resistance and critical information for the development of future antimicrobials. The rifamycins are broad-spectrum antibiotics that target bacterial transcription by inhibition of RNA polymerase. Although mutational alteration of the drug target is the predominant mechanism of resistance to this family of antibiotics in the clinic, a number of diverse inactivation mechanisms have also been reported. In this report, we investigate a subset of environmental rifampin-resistant actinomycete isolates and identify a diverse collection of rifampin inactivation mechanisms. We describe a single isolate, WAC1438, capable of inactivating rifampin by glycosylation. A draft genome sequence of WAC1438 (most closely related to Streptomyces speibonae, according to a 16S rRNA gene comparison) was assembled, and the associated rifampin glycosyltransferase open reading frame, rgt1438, was identified. The role of rgt1438 in rifampin resistance was confirmed by its disruption in the bacterial chromosome, resulting in a loss of antibiotic inactivation and a 4-fold decrease in MIC. Interestingly, examination of the RNA polymerase β-subunit sequence of WAC1438 suggests that it harbors a resistant target and thus possesses dual mechanisms of rifamycin resistance. Using an in vitro assay with purified enzyme, Rgt1438 could inactivate a variety of rifamycin antibiotics with comparable steady-state kinetics constants. Our results identify rgt1438 as a rifampin resistance determinant from WAC1438 capable of inactivating an assortment of rifamycins, adding a new element to the rifampin resistome.

Harnessing the Synthetic Capabilities of Glycopeptide Antibiotic Tailoring Enzymes: Characterization of the UK-68,597 Biosynthetic Cluster

In this study, a draft genome sequence of Actinoplanes sp. ATCC 53533 was assembled, and an 81‐kb biosynthetic cluster for the unusual sulfated glycopeptide UK‐68,597 was identified. Glycopeptide antibiotics are important in the treatment of infections caused by Gram‐positive bacteria. Glycopeptides contain heptapeptide backbones that are modified by many tailoring enzymes, including glycosyltransferases, sulfotransferases, methyltransferases, and halogenases, generating extensive chemical and functional diversity. Several tailoring enzymes in the cluster were examined in vitro for their ability to modify glycopeptides, resulting in the synthesis of novel molecules. Tailoring enzymes were also expressed in the producer of the glycopeptide aglycone A47934, generating additional chemical diversity. This work characterizes the biosynthetic program of UK‐68,597 and demonstrates the capacity to expand glycopeptide chemical diversity by harnessing the unique chemistry of tailoring enzymes.

Vancomycin-Variable Enterococci Can Give Rise to Constitutive Resistance during Antibiotic Therapy

ABSTRACT Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) are notorious clinical pathogens restricting the use of glycopeptide antibiotics in the clinic setting. Routine surveillance to detect VRE isolated from patients relies on PCR bioassays and chromogenic agar-based test methods. In recent years, we and others have reported the emergence of enterococcal strains harboring a “silent” copy of vancomycin resistance genes that confer a vancomycin-susceptible phenotype (vancomycin-susceptible enterococci [VSE]) and thus escape detection using drug sensitivity screening tests. Alarmingly, these strains are able to convert to a resistance phenotype (VSE→VRE) during antibiotic treatment, severely compromising the success of therapy. Such strains have been termed vancomycin-variable enterococci (VVE). We have investigated the molecular mechanisms leading to the restoration of resistance in VVE isolates through the whole-genome sequencing of resistant isolates, measurement of resistance gene expression, and quantification of the accumulation of drug-resistant peptidoglycan precursors. The results demonstrate that VVE strains can revert to a VRE phenotype through the constitutive expression of the vancomycin resistance cassette. This is accomplished through a variety of changes in the DNA region upstream of the resistance genes that includes both a deletion of a likely transcription inhibitory secondary structure and the introduction of a new unregulated promoter. The VSE→VRE transition of VVE can occur in patients during the course of antibiotic therapy, resulting in treatment failure. These VVE strains therefore pose a new challenge to the current regimen of diagnostic tests used for VRE detection in the clinic setting.