Immune & Antimicrobial
Bacteriocins
Bacteriocins are the weapons in a war between microbes: peptides a bacterium secretes to kill its competitors and take their space, which is why they keep being proposed as a source of new antibiotics. The lantibiotics among them, such as nisin, work by seizing lipid II, the building block a Gram-positive cell must have to make its wall. As treatments they have barely left the farm. The clearest infection result on file is in dairy cows with udder infection, where nisin Z cleared the bacteria in 65% of treated animals against 16% of untreated ones, and the one result against a resistant strain came from a mouse wound gel that also contained penicillin, so the credit cannot be assigned.
Last updated
Mechanism
Bind anionic bacterial membranes and, for lantibiotics such as nisin, sequester lipid II to form pores and block cell-wall synthesis.
Reported effects
What sources associate with this compound. Reported categories, not outcomes we have graded — each would need its own citation and rung.
- Antibacterial research
- Food preservation context
- Resistant pathogen research
Dosing on file unverified
No established human dose
Carried from a source that labels it unverified, and reproduced with that label attached. A record of what is reported, not a recommendation. No citation on this page establishes it.
Literature on file 6
-
review or editorial
The potential of bacteriocins in invasive fungal infections: Antifungal activities and intestinal protection. graded on: indexed as "Review" - secondary literature, not a study — “Review”
-
review or editorial
Bacteriocins from Limosilactobacillus and Ligilactobacillus: ecological logic, mechanistic diversity, and translational potential in the post-Lactobacillus taxonomy. graded on: indexed as "Review" - secondary literature, not a study — “Review”
-
review or editorial
Application of QPS- and GRAS-status microorganisms and bacteriocins for sustainable food preservation. graded on: indexed as "Review" - secondary literature, not a study — “Review”
-
computational
Virtual Screening of Bacteriocins From Lactic Acid Bacteria Against Monkeypox DNA Polymerase: Sakacin P and Mundticin KS Emerge as Promising Candidates. graded on: a computational prediction — read from the indexed abstract — “in silico”
-
animal in vivo
Rgg144/SHP144-controlled streptolancidin D mediates intra-species competition in Streptococcus pneumoniae with cumulative effect from other bacteriocins and fratricide. graded on: an animal model — read from the indexed abstract — “murine”
Not graded
1 citation whose study design could not be read from the title. Left ungraded rather than guessed at.
- not graded
Notes unverified prose
No bacteriocin approved for human therapeutic use as of 2026; limited to food preservation (nisin); preclinical only; No approved human therapeutic; nisin GRAS as food preservative
Not on file 9
8 of the 8 fields we track hold nothing on this record, and each says why. 1 further absence is named below. A blank field is a bug; a named absence is a finding.
- molecular weightnothing we hold supplies it
- molecular formulanothing we hold supplies it
- CAS registry numbernothing we hold supplies it
- PubChem identifiernothing we hold supplies it
- amino-acid sequencenothing we hold supplies it
- SMILES stringnothing we hold supplies it
- InChInothing we hold supplies it
- InChI keynothing we hold supplies it
- half-lifenothing we hold supplies it
Each field links to every other record missing the same thing. The full ledger holds 765 gaps across 163 records.