A natural depsipeptide antibiotic binds the E-site of the bacterial ribosome (opens in new tab)

A key challenge in addressing the antibiotic resistance crisis is identifying new antimicrobial compounds1. Although natural products produced by fungi and bacteria, particularly actinomycetes, have been the source of most antibiotics discovered over the past 80 years, they have fallen out of favour owing to the frequent rediscovery of known drug scaffolds2. The current perception is that antibiotic-producing actinomycetes have been over-mined and possess little novelty left to yield. Here we...