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Bacterial infection remains a serious threat to human lives because of emerging resistance to existing antibiotics. Although the scientific community has avidly pursued the discovery of new antibiotics that interact with new targets, these efforts have met with limited success since the early 1960s^,. Here we report the discovery of platensimycin, a previously unknown class of antibiotics produced by Streptomyces platensis. Platensimycin demonstrates strong, broad-spectrum Gram-positive antibacterial activity by selectively inhibiting cellular lipid biosynthesis. We show that this anti-bacterial effect is exerted through the selective targeting of β-ketoacyl-(acyl-carrier-protein (ACP)) synthase I/II (FabF/B) in the synthetic pathway of fatty acids. Direct binding assays show that platensimycin interacts specifically with the acyl-enzyme intermediate of the target protein, and X-ray crystallographic studies reveal that a specific …