ABOVE: Some bacterial cells produce a drug-resistant protein (labeled in red). Drug-sensitive cells swamped in the antibiotic tetracycline are visible in green.
CHRISTIAN LESTERLIN & SOPHIE NOLIVOS, UNIVERSITY OF LYON
Escherichia coli is capable of synthesizing drug-resistant proteins even in the presence of antibiotics designed to cripple cell growth. That’s the finding by a group of French researchers reporting today (May 23) in Science. They also discovered how the bacteria manage this feat: a well-conserved membrane pump shuttles antibiotics out of the cell—just long enough to buy the cells time to receive DNA from neighbor cells that codes for a drug-resistant protein.
“This is a key discovery,” microbiologist Manuel Varela of Eastern New Mexico University who wasn’t involved in the study says to The Scientist in an email. “This finding will help explain how bacteria manage to spread antimicrobial resistance as they encounter toxic levels of antibiotic.”
The discovery was a ...
