[5] Malacidins appear to take on their active conformation after they bind to calcium; the calcium-bound molecule then appears to bind to lipid II, a bacterial cell wall precursor molecule, leading to destruction of the cell wall and death of the bacteria.

The group had been looking into antibiotics related to daptomycin and their calcium-dependent nature, but determined that it would be impractical to culture variations in lab conditions.

To do this, they extracted DNA from around 2,000 soil samples to build metagenomic libraries that captured the genetic diversity of the environmental microbiome.

[2][7] They were, however, able to kill multidrug-resistant pathogens, including bacteria resistant to vancomycin in the laboratory, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) skin infections in an animal wound model.

[2][7] Brady, Hover, and two other authors disclosed in the 2018 paper that they had "competing financial interests, as they are employees or consultants of Lodo Therapeutics.

"[2] Lodo was founded in 2016 out of Brady's laboratory, to discover new chemicals in nature as starting points for drug discovery.