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One of the difficulties in treating chronic bacterial infections such as endocarditis and osteomyelitis is the presence of dormant bacteria in biofilms, which persist despite exposure to standard antimicrobial agents. The inability of most antimicrobial agents to kill these “persister” cells appears to be related to their targeting pathways important to actively replicating cells. A new class of antibiotics, acyldepsipeptides (ADEPs), acts against gram-positive bacteria by irreversibly activating a protein called ClpP — a subunit of a protease enzyme involved in the regulated degradation of specific proteins. Noting that in the presence of ADEPs, proteolysis by ClpP no longer depends on the presence of adenosine triphosphate, researchers (w…