By growing them together with a strain of Steptomyces, scientists were able to trigger anitbiotic production in Rhodococcus, a soil bacteria that does not normally produce antibiotics but whose genome has been noted to code for several secondary metabolites.

The researchers isolated the antibiotic, dubbed it rhodostreptomycin and started testing it to see what else it would kill. It proved effective against many other strains of bacteria, most notably Helicobacter pylori. Rhodostreptomycin is a promising candidate to treat H. pylori because it can survive in very acidic environments such as the stomach.

The antibiotic turned out to be a type of molecule called an aminoglycoside, composed of peculiar sugars, one of which has a ring structure that has not been seen before. The ring structure could offer chemists a new target for modification, allowing

More details from the MIT News.