Lantibiotics

Lantibiotics are a class of peptide antibiotics that contain the characteristic polycyclic thioether amino acids lanthionine or methyllanthionine, as well as the unsaturated amino acids dehydroalanine and 2-aminoisobutyric acid.

Lantibiotics are produced by a large number of Gram-positive bacteria such as Streptococcus and Streptomyces to attack other Gram-positive bacteria, and as such, they are considered a member of the bacteriocins. Bacteriocins are classified according to their extent of posttranslational modification. The lantibiotics are a class of more extensively modified bacteriocins, also called Class I bacteriocins. (Bacteriocins for which disulfide bonds are the only modification to the peptide are Class II bacteriocins.)

Lantibiotics are well studied because of the commercial use of these bacteria in the food industry for making dairy products such as cheese.

Nisin and epidermin are members of a family of lantibiotics that bind to a cell wall precursor lipid component of target bacteria and disrupt cell wall production. The duramycin family of lantibiotics binds phosphoethanolamine in the membranes of its target cells and seem to disrupt several physiological functions.