Safety Issues Associated with Antibiotic Resistance Hazards and Discovery of Safer Antibiotics Targeting Bacterial Purine Biosynthetic pathw

The rapid increase in resistance to current antibiotics strongly motivates the development of new antimicrobials with alternate modes of action. In eukaryotic systems, PurK and Class I PurE are substituted by a Class II PurE, which directly converts AIR i nto CAIR. Bacterial PurE and PurC also differ significantly from their human homologs. We thus propose a comprehensive approach for development of high throughput screening assays for inhibitors of the essential enzymes, PurE and PurC, which are both crit ical to bacterial survival. The outcomes of this project will be the safer, specific and novel class of antibiotics against some clinically important life-threatening pathogens and diseases, like pneumonia, anthrax, tuberculosis, etc.