UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Compounds that stop a cellular rescue operation for stuck ribosomes may bolster the nation’s defenses against biowarfare and bioterrorism, as well as create alternative antibiotics to handle increasingly resistant pathogens, according to a team of researchers.…

“At the beginning of the study, we identified compounds that block rescue of ribosomes that are stuck on mRNA, and these have antibiotic activity against a number of pathogens that we can test in the lab,” said Keiler. “In this study, first, we wanted to test the compounds against a pathogen that is important for biodefense and we also wanted to make sure that these compounds would work inside eukaryotic cells.”

Source: Ribosomes as key to stopping bacteria