Cantaloupe contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes killed 29 people in the U.S. this year in the deadliest foodborne outbreak since 1924. The authors of a study in mBio this week screened 57,000 small molecules to find one compound that can stop Listeria in its tracks, a needle-in-the-haystack approach that has turned up a compound that could lead to novel therapeutics for Listeriosis and other infections.
Palmer et al. targeted an Achilles tendon for many Gram positive bacteria, the stress responsive alternative sigma factor “σB”, since it poses a small target that, when struck, could bring down the entire pathogen.
Click on the “source” link to read more on mBio’s blog, mBiosphere.
