NRPro -- A powerful new approach for antibiotic drug discovery!

 

Even if you aren't interested in the fact that the pipeline for new antibiotics pretty much ran dry decades ago, you should check out this new paper at ACS. 

You can eventually drive a nail into a wall with the handle of a screwdriver. Similarly, you can eventually get a search engine designed for tryptic peptides to help you find some oddly conformed endogenous peptides. However, if you want to build a house by nailing peptidic natural products together you probably want to try a different tool and come up with your analogies after coffee. 

Most metabolomic tools are terrible for peptidic natural products. They're too complex, and large and they often multiply charge. Likewise, your peptide tools are looking for a minimum of 7 amino acids or something, and they sure aren't prepped for the mass changes when these little things cyclize! These new tools bridge that gap!