–Anuska Sen, Amity University Kolkata
‘Superbugs’ have been causing such a great havoc that certainly the world now knows about it. These microorganisms have developed resistance for antibiotics generally used to treat them, but scientists have discovered variants of vitamins called ‘Antivitamins’ that maybe instrumental in combating these superbugs.
Antivitamins usually have structural resemblance to the vitamin they actually inhibit. The interesting fact that human proteins are not affected by these antivitamins and can well cope with it gives an added assurance to use it for mitigation of superbugs. Researcher Fabian Rabe von Pappenheim and team have used a natural antivitamin 2’-methoxy-thiamine (MTh), which is often mistaken by E.coli as Vitamin B1 (thiamine). This MTh inhibits the functions of thiamine by replacing its methylgroup with a methoxy group. The bacteria take this up as a vitamin source and get killed due to its toxic effects.
Although further studies and validation are required for this, yet this study provides a convincing approach to fight against the pathogenic bacteria.
This article has been published in Nature Chemical Biology
Keep it up Anuska, your article is really interesting. Like this article I hope you will write again another interesting article in near future which will enrich our knowledge a lot.