Bacterial histidine kinases (HKs) are quintessential regulatory enzymes found ubiquitously in bacteria. Apart from their regulatory roles, they are also involved in the production of virulence factors and conferring resistance to various antibiotics in pathogenic microbes. We have previously reported compounds that inhibit multiple HKs by targeting the conserved catalytic and ATP-binding (CA) domain. Herein, we conduct a detailed structure–activity relationship assessment of adenine-based inhibitors using biochemical and docking methods. These studies have resulted in several observations. First, interaction of an inhibitor’s amine group with the conserved active-site Asp is essential for activity and likely dictates its orientation in the binding pocket. Second, a N-NH-N triad in the inhibitor scaffold is highly preferred for binding to conserved Gly:Asp:Asn residues. Lastly, hydrophobic electron-withdrawing groups at several positions in the adenine core enhance potency. The selectivity of these inhibitors was tested against heat shock protein 90 (HSP90), which possesses a similar ATP-binding fold. We found that groups that target the ATP-lid portion of the catalytic domain, such as a six-membered ring, confer selectivity for HKs.

•Modern targeted and untargeted microbial secondary metabolite discovery methods.•Mass spectrometry-based comparative analysis for discovery of microbial NPs.•Incorporation of databases, informatics and predictive software for NP discovery.•Microbial imaging of bacterial samples for communication network visualization.Secondary metabolite discovery from bacteria has become increasingly successful in the last decade due to the advancement of integrated genetic-based, spectrometric-based and informatics-based techniques. Microbes and their unique metabolic outputs have been widely studied since the beginning of modern medicine; however, it is well known that the current repertoire of secondary metabolites, or more commonly natural products, is incomplete and the understanding of natural product-mediated intracellular dialog is in its infancy. Here, we highlight the present state of bacterial metabolomics including compound discovery approaches and new strategies for probing the role of these molecules within communication networks.

Antibacterial agents that exploit new targets will be required to combat the perpetual rise of bacterial resistance to current antibiotics. We are exploring the inhibition of histidine kinases, constituents of two-component systems. Two-component systems are the primary signaling pathways that bacteria utilize to respond to their environment. They are ubiquitous in bacteria and trigger various pathogenic mechanisms. To attenuate these signaling pathways, we sought to broadly target the histidine kinase family by focusing on their highly conserved ATP-binding domain. Development of a fluorescence polarization displacement assay facilitated high-throughput screening of ∼53 000 diverse small molecules for binding to the ATP-binding pocket. Of these compounds, nine inhibited the catalytic activity of two or more histidine kinases. These scaffolds could provide valuable starting points for the design of broadly effective HK inhibitors, global reduction of bacterial signaling, and ultimately, a class of antibiotics that function by a new mechanism of action.

Chemoselective purification technologies have seen great success in biomolecule isolation, with a classic example being the genetically-encoded His tag utilized to enrich desired proteins from a crude lysate. We sought to translate this purification tactic into a powerful tool for the isolation of natural products and demonstrate that chemoselective enrichment can reduce the number of purification steps required and increase the yield obtained for important natural products, as compared to the use of traditional chromatography methods alone. To date, we have reported reversible enrichment tags for three functional groups, carboxylic acids and aliphatic or aryl hydroxyls. To illustrate the power of chemoselectivity-mediated purification of natural products, we present here an improved isolation of borrelidin. Application of our carboxylic acid tag yielded pure borrelidin in only two steps and with double the yield acquired with traditional chromatography methods. These results highlight the utility of this orthogonal strategy to facilitate the isolation of natural products, which are often present in minute quantities in their source materials.

Siderophores are bacterially secreted, small molecule iron chelators that facilitate the binding of insoluble iron (III) for reuptake and use in various biological processes. These compounds are classified by their iron (III) binding geometry, as dictated by subunit composition and include groups such as the trihydroxamates (hexadentate ligand) and catecholates (bidentate). Small modifications to the core structure such as acetylation, lipid tail addition, or cyclization, make facile characterization of new siderophores difficult by molecular ion detection alone (MS1). We have expanded upon previous fragmentation-directed studies using electrospray ionization collision-induced dissociation tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-CID-MS/MS/MS) and identified diagnostic MS3 features from the trihydroxamate siderophore class for ferrioxamine B and E1 by accurate mass. Diagnostic features for MS3 include C–C, C–N, amide, and oxime cleavage events with proposed losses of water and –CO from the iron (III) coordination sites. These insights will facilitate the discovery of novel trihydroxamate siderophores from complex sample matrices.

Natural products are privileged scaffolds due to their high propensity to possess bioactivity. To expedite discovery of thiol-containing compounds, we devised a selective solid-supported reagent for their immobilization, followed by cleavage of a photocleavable linker to yield stable natural product conjugates for direct detection by mass spectrometry. Importantly, the natural products can also be tracelessly released to yield the native structures for chemical and biological evaluation.