High profile review publication on antibiotic resistance from the Hauryliuk and Atkinson labs, MIMS
In this review, published in the influential journal Nature Reviews Microbiology, Umeå researchers Vasili Hauryliuk (also affiliated with Tartu University, Estonia) and Gemma C. Atkinson, together with their collaborators Daniel N. Wilson (University of Hamburg, Germany) and Alex J. O’Neill (University of Leeds, UK) discuss an important and increasingly recognised type of antibiotic resistance: antibiotic resistance through target protection.
In this mechanism, dedicated protein resistance factors transiently bind to the target to restore its function. This restoration of the function can be achieved in several ways. The resistance factors can remove the antibiotic either by sterically competing with the drug (type I target protection mechanism) or inducing allosteric changes that result in drug dissociation (type II). Alternatively, the resistance factor can bind to the antibiotic target and restore its function despite the antibiotic remaining bound (type III).
Over the years Vasili Hauryliuk and Gemma Atkinson have uncovered important aspects of target protection mechanisms that protect the ribosome, such as ABC-F ATPases (Murina et al. JMB 2019, Crowe-McAuliffe et al. PNAS 2018, Murina et al. NAR 2018) and TetO GTPases (Li et al. Nature Communications 2013).
You can read the full article on the MIMS website.
The paper, Target protection as a key antibiotic resistance mechanism (2020) Daniel N. Wilson, Vasili Hauryliuk, Gemma C. Atkinson & Alex J. O’Neill, Nature Reviews Microbiology, is available on the Nature.com website.