Deciphering the mode of action of cell wall-inhibiting antibiotics using metabolic labeling of growing peptidoglycan in Streptococcus pyogenes.

Because of the scanty pipeline of antibiotics newly obtained from nature, chemical modification of established drugs is one of the major streams of current antibacterial research. Intuitive and easy-to-use assays are critical for identifying drug candidates with novel modes of action. In this study, we demonstrated that metabolic fluorescent staining of growing cell walls is a powerful tool for mode-of-action analyses of antibiotics using Streptococcus pyogenes. A set of major cell-wall-inhibiting antibiotics (bacitracin, D-cycloserine, flavomycin, oxacillin, ramoplanin, and vancomycin) was employed to validate the potential of the assay. The mechanistic differences of these antibiotics were successfully observed. For instance, D-cycloserine treatment induced fluorescently stained, excessive peripheral cell wall growth. This may indicate that the switch from the peripheral growth stage to the succeeding septal growth was disturbed by the treatment. We then applied this assay to analyze a series of vancomycin derivatives. The assay was sufficiently sensitive to detect the effects of single-site chemical modification of vancomycin on its modes of action. This metabolic fluorescent labeling method is easy to perform, especially because it does not require radiolabeled substrates. Thus, it is suitable for the preliminary evaluation of antibacterial mechanisms during antibacterial research.

Novel blood-brain barrier-permeable spin probe for in vivo electron paramagnetic resonance imaging.

A novel blood-brain barrier (BBB)-permeable compound 10 was discovered, wherein the nitroxide moiety was linked to a nicotine acetylcholine receptor ligand. It was applied as a probe for electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) imaging of the mouse brain. The results demonstrated that the newly synthesized compound 10 exhibited BBB permeability. These findings provide an essential discovery for in vivo EPR imaging.

Unexpected dehomologation of primary alcohols to one-carbon shorter carboxylic acids using o-iodoxybenzoic acid (IBX).

A novel and efficient transformation of primary alcohols to one-carbon shorter carboxylic acids using IBX is reported. Mechanistic studies revealed that the combination of IBX and molecular iodine produces a different active hypervalent iodine species.

Simultaneous imaging of an enantiomer pair by electron paramagnetic resonance using isotopic nitrogen labeling.

This Article describes the simultaneous imaging of chiral nitroxyl radicals using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). Chiral nitroxyl radicals could be simultaneously visualized with the labeling of isotopic nitrogen. Chiral nitroxyl radicals, hydroxylmethyl-2,2,5,5-tetramethylpyrrolidine-1-oxyl, were visualized using the method of simultaneous EPR imaging, which refers to the visualization of two kinds of molecules with unpaired electrons in a single image scan. EPR spectra of a racemic mixture of chiral nitroxyl radicals and those of the respective R and S configurations confirmed labeling by isotopic nitrogen. (1)H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging and simultaneous imaging of solutions of chiral nitroxyl radicals were performed. The advantages and limitations of simultaneous imaging using EPR are also discussed. Simultaneous imaging with chiral-labeled nitroxyl radicals is a new application of EPR imaging and may be useful for biological studies involving biologically active chiral molecules.

Sequential Birch reaction and asymmetric Ir-catalyzed hydrogenation as a route to chiral building blocks.

A range of 1,2,4-trisubstituted cyclohexadienes obtained from the Birch reaction were hydrogenated asymmetrically to produce synthetically valuable chiral compounds in high enantio- and diastereoselectivity.