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Updated: May 27, 2026

Assay Development for High-Throughput Drug Screening Against Mycobacteria
Published on: October 25, 2024
An antibacterial from Hypericum acmosepalum inhibits ATP-dependent MurE ligase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Khadijo Osman1, Dimitrios Evangelopoulos, Chandrakala Basavannacharya
1Department of Pharmaceutical and Biological Chemistry, The School of Pharmacy, University of London, 29-39 Brunswick Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1AX, UK.
Abstract:
In a project to characterise new antibacterial chemotypes from plants, hyperenone A and hypercalin B were isolated from the hexane and chloroform extracts of the aerial parts of Hypericum acmosepalum. The structures of both compounds were characterised by extensive one- and two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and were confirmed by mass spectrometry. Hyperenone A and hypercalin B exhibited antibacterial activity against multidrug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, with minimum inhibition concentration ranges of 2-128 mg/L and 0.5-128 mg/L, respectively. Hyperenone A also showed growth-inhibitory activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv and Mycobacterium bovis BCG at 75 mg/L and 100mg/L. Neither hyperenone A nor hypercalin B inhibited the growth of Escherichia coli and both were non-toxic to cultured mammalian macrophage cells. Both compounds were tested for their ability to inhibit the ATP-dependent MurE ligase of M. tuberculosis, a crucial enzyme in the cytoplasmic steps of peptidoglycan biosynthesis. Hyperenone A inhibited MurE selectively, whereas hypercalin B did not have any effect on enzyme activity.
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