A New Antibiotic Bovinocidin, Identified as β-Nitropropionic Acid

Abstract

In the course of searching new antibiotics using Mycobacterium tuberculosis BCG as the test organism, the authors obtained a crystalline antibiotic from the culture fluid of a streptomyces isolated from the soil of Urawa city, Saitama Prefecture. It was named bovinocidin. This antibiotic was found to have a weak activity only against Mycobacterium tuberculosis BCG and no activity was observed against other microorganisms including Mycobacterium tuberculosis H₃₇Rv. In the course of the further studies, this antibiotic was found to be β-nitropropionic acid. As the natural metabolites, this compound was first obtained as hiptagenic acid^1,2) by Gorter from the degradation products of hiptagin, a glycoside of the root bark of Hiptage madablota. Next Buch et al.³⁾ isolated this compound as “a toxic fraction of very low antibiotic activity” from the flavicin-producing fungus named Aspergillus flavus. Nakamura et al.⁴⁾ is also isolated the same compound from the culture fluid of Aspergillus oryzae and described its activity against “Hiochi” bacteria. But as the metabolite of streptomyces, β-nitropropionic acid was firstly obtained by authors. In this report the isolation and purification, the antimicrobial activities and the structural determination were described.