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Scientists have discovered bacteria and fungi battling it out in abandoned and contaminated coal mines – during which they produce promising anti-cancer and antibiotic natural products that could save thousands of lives. This is a striking example of how much we can learn from organisms that live in extreme conditions. Medicine could learn and gain a lot from these molecules – if we could access them more easily than venturing into coal mines and hoping to isolate the right bacteria and fungi at the right time in their dispute. To address this problem, a team of chemists recently achieved the first laboratory synthesis of these so-called glonitrines using very elegant organic chemistry. Starting with a planar tricetopiperazine, they used clever synthesis steps to build the 3D structure of the final molecule which contains a central ring crowded with a disulfide bridge.

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