Development of a new image based technology to rapidly screen natural product ext

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We have developed a new approach to facilitate identification of natural products with antibacterial activities that rapidly discriminates between different mechanisms of action (MOA). This approach, bacterial cytological profiling (BCP), uses quantitative fluorescence microscopy to measure the effects of antibiotic treatment on individual cells. Antibiotics that target different cellular pathways and different steps within a pathway generate unique cytological profiles, allowing identification of the likely MOA of new compounds within a few hours. The approach can detect nuisance compounds and multiple activities in partially purified or crude natural product extracts and it can detect active molecules at sub-inhibitoryconcentrations. Linnaeus Bioscience Inc. is a start up company founded to commercialize this technology and make it accessible on a fee for service basis to the pharmaceutical industry and the scientific community. The goal of this project is to make