Kanamycin is an antibiotic produced by a bacterium from the genus Streptomyces that is classified as an aminoglycoside. It is a broad spectrum antibiotic used to treat a wide range of infections, typically not as the first choice of antibiotics.
Kanamycin interferes with protein synthesis by attaching to the 30S subunit of the 70 S bacterial ribosome. During the recognition step of peptide elongation, its presence can cause the mRNA to be misaligned and misread, so that the wrong amino acid is added to the growing peptide. The damaged proteins cause cell death.