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Record W4417119270 · doi:10.1128/aem.01346-25

Discovery of MBL-AB01: a novel antibacterial xanthone antibiotic with high activity against methicillin-resistant <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i>

2025· article· en· W4417119270 on OpenAlexaff
Kristin F. Degnes, Anna Nordborg, Giang‐Son Nguyen, Guro Kruge Nærdal, Tonje Marita Bjerkan Heggeset, Peter P. Molesworth, Sigrid Hakvåg, Vu To Nakstad, Johan Evenäs, Klara Jonasson, Trond E. Ellingsen, Alexander Wentzel, Geir Klinkenberg, Håvard Sletta

Bibliographic record

VenueApplied and Environmental Microbiology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicMicrobial Natural Products and Biosynthesis
Canadian institutionsDiscovery Centre
FundersHORIZON EUROPE European Innovation CouncilNorges Forskningsråd
KeywordsAntibioticsGene clusterXanthoneAntibacterial activityGeneMutagenesisBacteriaDrug discovery

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

ABSTRACT A novel compound denoted MBL-AB01 was isolated from a marine Actinoalloteichus , which belongs to a rare and underexplored class of Actinobacteria . This work demonstrates that the novel compound MBL-AB01 shows very high activity in vitro against six methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains, and high activity against a panel of three other Gram-positive strains, including a vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium . Structure elucidation of the compound revealed that MBL-AB01 is a polycyclic xanthone antibiotic closely related to the bioactive compounds: xantholipin and lysolipin. This class of antibiotics has caught interest due to its unique chemical structure and diverse biological activity. The gene cluster encoding MBL-AB01 production was identified, and the individual genes within the cluster were annotated along with proposed functional roles. The compound was produced by bioreactor fermentations, and significantly higher yields of MBL-AB01 were obtained after classical mutagenesis and fermentation process improvements. IMPORTANCE Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections have become a great challenge in hospitals over the last decades, and MRSA is currently one of the six pathogens on the World Health Organization priority list. Here, we demonstrate that the novel antibiotic MBL-AB01 has excellent antibacterial properties against six S. aureus strains, including MRSA. MBL-AB01 belongs to the poorly explored class of polycyclic xanthones, thereby fulfilling innovation criteria for the development of new antibiotics. The compound can be produced in sufficient amounts for early formulation development and pre-clinical trials.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.001
Threshold uncertainty score0.002

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.006
GPT teacher head0.196
Teacher spread0.190 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designBench or experimental
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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