Scientists from Cornell University, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and elsewhere have found that a surplus of membrane proteins may help bacteria survive antibiotic exposure. These proteins are part of a shuttling mechanism that bacteria use to pump out a wide spectrum of antibiotics along with other physiological substrates from the cell. The researchers are now focused on using chemical and mechanical manipulations to disrupt the process so that antibiotics can be more effective.
Details of the study were published in Cell Reports Physical Science in a paper titled, “Transporter excess and clustering facilitate adaptor-protein shuttling for bacterial efflux.”
In it, the researchers describe how an imbalance in the three-part protein complex—MacAB-TolC—helps gram-negative…