News Summary

• Antibiotic resistance is a pervasive, growing global crisis; estimates suggest that drug-resistant infections could kill at least 39 million people by 2050.
• Antibiotic development and manufacturing are expensive and rarely profitable, so drug companies are reluctant to invest.
• Discovering antimicrobials that can be synthesized easily — and cheaply — could help.
• Using machine-learning tools to tackle tasks in silico, from identifying new antibiotic candidates to predicting potential mechanisms of action, enables researchers to work faster — and on tighter budgets.