ICYMI: Inhibition of translation termination by Drosocin, an antimicrobial peptide from fruit flies.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.11.519952v1
Key result, the authors find mutations in Drosocin that improve its ribosomal inhibitory activity, suggesting it could be improved further.
@cyrilpedia @jhdcate @MarkHanson Yes, this is a really interesting result. I looked into trying to have Drosocin produced commercially a little while back and it was impossible to source because of the glycosylation...
@marcdionne Was it going to cure male pattern baldness?
@cyrilpedia Is bacterial translation termination a well-characterized target in male pattern baldness?
@marcdionne @cyrilpedia @jhdcate Indeed... no glycosylation (~$100?). WIth? (~$5000) - Oof.
Follows other papers where same authors showed proline-rich AMPs bind ribosomes in fun and unique ways. This is the paper that adds Drosocin to that list, which already included Oncocin, Apidaecin, etc...
Chatting with Alex Mankin, DnaK stuff is probably noise of early investigations, whereas ribosome is the true target! Elegant.
@cyrilpedia @jhdcate @marcdionne Oh... hello. Yes this is my jam.
Congrats to the Mankin lab! Now if only they were on #ScienceMastodon ...