Potential new ways of facilitating antibiotic delivery
The latest PNAS paper from the Hiller and the Bumann labs is shaking the common assumptions on porins function, which may unravel new ways of facilitating antibiotic delivery into bacteria. Check out this great collaborative work here »
Ude, J., Tripathi, V., Buyck, J.M., Söderholm, S., Cunrath, O., Fanous, J., Claudi, B., Egli, A., Schleberger, C., Hiller, S., and Bumann, D. (2021) Outer membrane permeability: Antimicrobials and diverse nutrients bypass porins in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. PNAS 118:e2107644118
Novel antibiotics are urgently needed to resolve the current antimicrobial resistance crisis. For critical pathogens, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, drug entry through the cell envelope is one of the major challenges in the development of effective novel antibiotics.
The Hiller and Bumann labs now show that almost all antibiotics and diverse hydrophilic nutrients bypass porins and instead permeate directly through the outer membrane lipid bilayer. By contrast, Pseudomonas needs porins for efficient utilisation of carboxylate-containing nutrients as carboxylate groups hinder bilayer penetration. As many current antibiotics carry carboxylate groups, these findings may lead us to re-consider our strategies when designing new antimicrobial molecules, and to identify new strategies for facilitating their delivery into bacteria.
