Antibiotic mode of action profiling (Biomap) as a platform for the discovery of novel natural product antibiotics

This study establishes a new antibiotic profiling strategy using a panel of clinically relevant bacterial strains to create biological fingerprint profiles for all the major classes of antibiotics. BioMAP screening has been shown to effectively cluster antibiotics by structural class based on biological activities. Using this approach we have accurately predicted the presence of known antibiotics in natural product extracts and have discovered a naphthoquinone-based antibiotic from our marine natural products library that possesses a unique carbon skeleton. We have demonstrated that bioactivity fingerprinting is a successful strategy for profiling antibiotic lead compounds, and that BioMAP can be applied to the discovery of new natural product antibiotics leads.