An azido-oxazolidinone antibiotic for live bacterial

An azide-functionalised analogue of the oxazolidinone antibiotic linezolid was synthesised and shown to retain antimicrobial activity. Using facile click chemistry, this versatile intermediate can be further functionalised to explore antimicrobial structureactivity relationships or conjugated to fluorophores to generate fluorescent probes. Such probes can report bacteria and their location in a sample in real time. Model领 of the structures bound to the cognate 50S ribosome target demonstrates binding to the same site as linezolid is possible. The fluorescent probes were successfully used to image Gram-positive bacteria using confocal microscopy.