Ketolides are promising new antimicrobials effective against a broad range of Gram-positive pathogens, in part because of the low propensity of these drugs to trigger the expression of resistance genes. A natural ketolide pikromycin and a related compound methymycin are produced by Streptomyces venezuelae strain ATCC 15439. The producer avoids the inhibitory effects of its own antibiotics by expressing two paralogous rRNA methylase genes pikR1 and pikR2 with seemingly redundant functions.

Many antibiotics inhibit the growth of sensitive bacteria by interfering with ribosome function. However, discovery of new protein synthesis inhibitors is curbed by the lack of facile techniques capable of readily identifying antibiotic target sites and modes of action. Furthermore, the frequent rediscovery of known antibiotic scaffolds, especially in natural product extracts, is timeconsuming and expensive and diverts resources that could be used toward the isolation of novel lead molecules.