Inhibition of Isoleucyl-tRNA Synthetase by the Hybrid Antibiotic Thiomarinol

Hybrid antibiotics are an emerging antimicrobial strategy to overcome antibiotic resistance. The natural product thiomarinol A is a hybrid of two antibiotics: holothin, a dithiolopyrrolone (DTP), and marinolic acid, a close analogue of the drug mupirocin that is used to treat methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). DTPs disrupt metal homeostasis by chelating metal ions in cells, whereas mupirocin targets the essential enzyme isoleucyl-tRNA synthetase (IleRS). Thiomarinol A is over 100-fold more potent than mupirocin against mupirocin-sensitive MRSA; however, its mode of action has been unknown. We show that thiomarinol A targets IleRS. A knockdown of the IleRS-encoding gene, ileS, exhibited sensitivity to a synthetic analogue of thiomarinol A in a chemical genomics screen. Thiomarinol A inhibits MRSA IleRS with a picomolar K_i and binds to IleRS with low femtomolar affinity, 1600 times more tightly than mupirocin. We find that thiomarinol A remains effective against high-level mupirocin-resistant MRSA and provide evidence to support a dual mode of action for thiomarinol A that may include both IleRS inhibition and metal chelation. We demonstrate that MRSA develops resistance to thiomarinol A to a substantially lesser degree than mupirocin and the potent activity of thiomarinol A requires hybridity between DTP and mupirocin. Our findings identify a mode of action of a natural hybrid antibiotic and demonstrate the potential of hybrid antibiotics to combat antibiotic resistance.