Study Finds How Organisms Self-Medicate

Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists say they have discovered how organisms create self-medications, such as anti-fungal agents.

The MIT chemists say they already knew a particular enzyme was able to coax a reaction from stubborn chemical concoctions to generate a large family of medically valuable compounds called halogenated natural products. The question was how they accomplished it.

The answer was important since it would lead to scientists being able to efficiently reproduce, or slightly re-engineer, such products, which include antibiotics, anti-tumor agents, and fungicides.

The answer, said MIT Associate Chemistry Professor Catherine Drennan, is a matter of the size of one of the enzyme’s parts.

To make halogenated natural products, enzymes catalyze the transformation of a totally unreactive part of a molecule, in this case a methyl group. They break specific chemical bonds and then replace a hydrogen atom with a halide.

In the lab, that’s a very challenging task, but Drennen says nature accomplishes it almost nonchalantly.

Drennen, co-author Christopher Walsh of the Harvard Medical School, and first author Leah Blasiak detail the study in the March 16 issue of Nature.