Antibiotic resistance is spreading faster than the introduction of new compounds into clinical practice, causing a public health crisis. Most antibiotics were produced by screening soil microorganisms, but this limited resource of cultivable bacteria was overmined by the 1960s. Synthetic approaches to produce antibiotics have been unable to replace this platform. Uncultured bacteria make up approximately 99% of all species in external environments, and are an untapped source of new antibiotics. We developed several methods to grow uncultured organisms by cultivation in situ or by using specific growth factors. Here we report a new antibiotic that we term teixobactin, discovered in a screen of uncultured bacteria. Teixobactin inhibits cell wall synthesis by binding to a highly conserved motif of lipid II (precursor of peptidoglycan) and lipid III (precursor of cell wall teichoic acid). We did not obtain any mutants of Staphylococcus aureus or Mycobacterium tuberculosis resistant to teixobactin. The properties of this compound suggest a path towards developing antibiotics that are likely to avoid development of resistance.

Teixobactin represents the first member of a newly discovered class of antibiotics that act through inhibition of cell wall synthesis. Teixobactin binds multiple bactoprenol-coupled cell wall precursors, inhibiting both peptidoglycan and teichoic acid synthesis. Here, we show that the impressive bactericidal activity of teixobactin is due to the synergistic inhibition of both targets, resulting in cell wall damage, delocalization of autolysins, and subsequent cell lysis. We also find that teixobactin does not bind mature peptidoglycan, further increasing its activity at high cell densities and against vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus (VISA) isolates with thickened peptidoglycan layers. These findings add to the attractiveness of teixobactin as a potential therapeutic agent for the treatment of infection caused by antibiotic-resistant Gram-positive pathogens.

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