Kazuhiko Kurosawa was running out of variables. For eight months he had made hundreds of cultures of Rhodococcus fascians - manipulating pH, temperature, salt concentration, media type, oxygen levels, even degree of agitation - each time attempting to provoke the bacteria into transcribing a set of genes he knew lay dormant in its genome. But the soil-dwelling bacteria remained recalcitrant.
Anthony Sinskey's lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Kurosawa joined in 2003, first became interested in Rhodococcus while in collaboration with Merck. The company hoped to use the bacteria to more efficiently make a precursor for one of its HIV protease inhibitors, Crixivan. While analyzing the Rhodococcus genome, the MIT researchers were surprised to find close to 100 genes for nonribosomal peptides, and 30 clusters of genes for polyketides, two major classes of antibiotics. But unlike most other soil-dwelling bacteria, Rhodococcus was not known to produce an antibiotic. Finding ...
