Faster way to screen nonribosomal peptides

Bandeira et al. in the paper "De Novo Sequencing of Nonribosomal Peptides" ( http://www.springerlink.com/content/n532545722750915/ ) outline a strategy based on MS alignment leading to faster nonribosomal peptides (example penicillin) screening. This has potential to hasten the process of finding new drugs (better say candidates?).

clipped from www.genengnews.com If you imagine the structure of an NRP as a cyclic string of beads, then the new algorithms both decipher the mass of each bead based on the mass spectrometry and determine the order of the beads within the ring crucial pieces of information for uncovering both the structure of the molecule and its pharmacological activities.