Bicyclomycin (1) is the only natural product inhibitor of the transcription termination factor rho. Rho is a hexameric helicase that terminates nascent RNA transcripts utilizing ATP hydrolysis and is an essential protein for many bacteria. The paucity of information concerning the 1-rho interaction stems from the weak binding affinity of 1. We report a novel technique using imine formation with rho to enhance the affinity of a bicyclomycin analogue and determine the binding stoichiometry by isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) and mass spectrometry (MS). Our designed bicyclomycin ligand, 5a-(3-formyl-phenylsulfanyl)-dihydrobicyclomycin (2) (apparent I(50) = 4 muM), inhibits rho an order of magnitude more efficiently than 1 (I(50) = 60 muM). MS shows that 2 selectively forms an imine with K181 in rho. We found that despite the heterogeneity of ATP binding (three tight and three weak) imposed on the rho hexamer, the nearby bicyclomycin binding pocket is not affected, and both 1 and 2 bind with equal affinity to all six subunits.