Hygromycin B
Encyclopedia
Hygromycin B is an antibiotic
Antibiotic
An antibacterial is a compound or substance that kills or slows down the growth of bacteria.The term is often used synonymously with the term antibiotic; today, however, with increased knowledge of the causative agents of various infectious diseases, antibiotic has come to denote a broader range of...

 produced by the bacterium Streptomyces
Streptomyces
Streptomyces is the largest genus of Actinobacteria and the type genus of the family Streptomycetaceae. Over 500 species of Streptomyces bacteria have been described. As with the other Actinobacteria, streptomycetes are gram-positive, and have genomes with high guanine and cytosine content...

hygroscopicus. It is an aminoglycoside
Aminoglycoside
An aminoglycoside is a molecule or a portion of a molecule composed of amino-modifiedsugars.Several aminoglycosides function as antibiotics that are effective against certain types of bacteria...

 that kills bacteria
Bacteria
Bacteria are a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...

, fungi and higher eukaryotic cells by inhibiting protein synthesis.

History

Hygromycin B was originally developed in the 1950s for use with animals and is still added into swine and chicken feed as an anthelmintic
Anthelmintic
Anthelmintics or antihelminthics are drugs that expel parasitic worms from the body, by either stunning or killing them. They may also be called vermifuges or vermicides .-Pharmaceutical classes:...

 or anti-worm
Worm
The term worm refers to an obsolete taxon used by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrate animals, and stems from the Old English word wyrm. Currently it is used to describe many different distantly-related animals that typically have a long cylindrical...

ing agent (product name: Hygromix). Hygromycin B is produced by Streptomyces hygroscopicus, a bacterium isolated in 1953 from a soil sample. Resistance genes were discovered in the early 1980s.
Mechanism of action:
Hygromycin is active against both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. It acts by inhibiting polypeptide synthesis. It stabilizes the tRNA-ribosomal acceptor site, thereby inhibiting translocation.

Use in research

In the laboratory it is used for the selection and maintenance of prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells that contain the hygromycin resistance
Antibiotic resistance
Antibiotic resistance is a type of drug resistance where a microorganism is able to survive exposure to an antibiotic. While a spontaneous or induced genetic mutation in bacteria may confer resistance to antimicrobial drugs, genes that confer resistance can be transferred between bacteria in a...

 gene. The resistance gene is a kinase
Kinase
In chemistry and biochemistry, a kinase is a type of enzyme that transfers phosphate groups from high-energy donor molecules, such as ATP, to specific substrates, a process referred to as phosphorylation. Kinases are part of the larger family of phosphotransferases...

 that inactivates hygromycin B through phosphorylation
Phosphorylation
Phosphorylation is the addition of a phosphate group to a protein or other organic molecule. Phosphorylation activates or deactivates many protein enzymes....

. Since the discovery of hygromycin-resistance genes, hygromycin B has become a standard selection antibiotic in gene transfer experiments in many prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. Based on impurity monitor method , four different kinds of impurities are discovered in commercial hygromycin B from different suppliers and toxicities of different impurities to the cell lines are described in the following external links.

External links

Information from hygromycin.net (InvivoGen
InvivoGen
Invivogen is a manufacturer of life science research products. It is based in San Diego, California and conducts business worldwide. InvivoGen is a provider of Toll-like receptor related products , selection antibiotics and mycoplasma detection & elimination products...

)

Information from hygromycin-evopure.com
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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