A team of three Turkish scientists from Istanbul Technical University is working on a new way to speed up the search for antibiotics. Dr. Merve Yüce, Professor Dr. Fethiye Aylin Sungur, and Professor Dr. Özge Kürkçüoğlu have developed a computational method that could help identify new drug candidates against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Their study was published in April and was selected as the cover article for a special issue of the American journal Biochemistry.

The research focuses on the ribosome, a structure that bacteria need to produce proteins. Many antibiotics work by blocking this process, but bacteria can develop ways to resist those drugs. The Turkish team is looking for new targets that have not been used before, which may help researchers find better treatment options.

Instead of testing thousands of compounds only through laboratory experiments, the team uses computer models to narrow down possible candidates. This can reduce time and cost in the early stage of antibiotic development. The method may help companies developing new antibiotics as well as researchers studying resistance to existing drugs.

Each scientist played a separate role in the work. Kürkçüoğlu developed the main idea, Sungur checked the method against biological reality, and Yüce carried out the computational analysis and drafted the first paper. The team also published a second study in RSC Advances, where a predicted inhibitor was later tested in the lab and found to be effective.