Sugar synthesis hits the sweet spot
Friday, May 6, 2011 - 10:30
in Health & Medicine
A new strategy for synthesizing the kind of complex molecules that certain bacteria use to build their protective cell walls has been developed by Akihiro Ishiwata and Yukishige Ito from the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Wako, Japan. The strategy applies to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), so it could lead to much-needed new medicines to combat the spread of multi-drug-resistant strains of the pathogen.