Synthetic peptide inhibitors of DNA replication in Staphylococcus aureus

During the last decades bacteria have developed resistance towards many of the antibiotics on the marked. With this in mind it is important to continue the development of new antibacterial agents. A good target for development of antibiotics is one that has a conserved function in a wide spectrum of clinically important pathogens and is essential for bacterial proliferation. The bacterial replication apparatus fulfill the requirements for a good drug target. The replisome of S. aureus consists of 5 different subunits (2, PolC2, 4, δ and δ`) who’s organization depends on multiple protein-protein interactions. Centrally in the replisome is the -clamp where to multiple proteins binds through a conserved motif.
We have identified the protein-protein interactions in the replisome of S. aureus by use of a bacterial two-hybrid system. A reverse bacterial two-hybrid system (R-BTH) based on PyrF counterselection was developed to directly select for compounds able to disrupt selected interactions.
We have subsequently constructed a cyclic peptide library for intracellular synthesis of cyclic peptides using known technology. Several cyclic peptides were able to interfere with oligomerization of DnaN (), DnaB and DnaX (). Three peptides identified as inhibitors of DnaN have been purified. Two of these peptides inhibited growth as well as DNA replication in S. aureus. The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the peptides was approximately 50 g/ml. Overexpression of DnaN reduced the inhibitory effect of the peptides confirming the target of the peptides.