Key Points:
- Antimicrobial resistance is more evolved than previously recognized.
- Commonly occurring bacteria have developed a protein that can eject the rifamycin class of antibiotics.
- Researchers say antimicrobial resistance should be commanding “much more attention and far more research resources.”
Researchers at McMaster University have discovered that bacteria are more “crafty” than previously thought when it comes to resisting antibiotics.
In new research published in Molecular Cell, the team unraveled unraveled a sophisticated process that that commonly occurring bacteria use to save themselves from the rifamycin class of antibiotics, which occur naturally and are also manufactured to treat infectious diseases.
Rifamycins work by binding to RNA polymerase, a protein essential for bacterial life. The researchers discovered that the resistant bacteria, which occur widely in the environment and in some human pathogens, have developed a protein that can eject the antibiotic from RNA polymerase. Once the rifamycin is dislodged, they use specially adapted proteins to attack and destroy it.
“We’ve been facing this antimicrobial resistance problem for many years,” said Gerry Wright, head of the Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biological Threats at McMaster. “Every time we think we’ve figured out all the ways bacteria resist antibiotics, along comes something like this, to let us know there are tricks we hadn’t even thought of before.”
Now, Wright and his team are combing their database of tens of thousands of samples to see if other bacteria use parallel processes and whether they reveal vulnerabilities that can be exploited to create urgently needed new antibiotics.
The antimicrobial resistance threat to public health is simply too big to ignore, Wright says, and requires collaboration between governments, universities and manufacturers.
“We have to keep reminding people just how tricky these bugs are,” he says. “We’ve all been focused on COVID these past two and half years, but antimicrobial resistance is still an enormous problem and these bacteria have continued to innovate and diversify their mechanisms of resistance. We have to keep working to make sure we really do understand the enemy.”
Information provided by McMaster University.