Multiresistant bacteria to antibiotics decrypted the molecular mechanism

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Multiresistant bacteria to antibiotics decrypted the molecular mechanism

3 June 2009 No Comment

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Multidrug resistance of bacteria to antibiotics is a phenomenon that has emerged during the 1950s, following the use of these drugs. If researchers have subsequently discovered that the resistance genes were easily captured, disseminated and exchanged for one bacterium to another by a “cut and paste genetic structure containing these genes, called integrate However, the dynamics of these exchanges, which determines the multiresistance in bacteria, remained unexplained. They reveal for the first time how bacteria acquire multidrug resistance properties.

It is the antibiotics themselves that cause the synthesis of the enzyme that captures bacterial resistance genes, allowing their expression in the integron. Rearranging, random resistance genes within the integron is promoted by this enzyme. But the order of these genes in the integron determines the priority for their expression, the first being the most expressed and confers on the bacteria resistance corresponding. For their part, remain silent while being kept in reserve, however. Thus, when a new rearrangement, triggered by taking an antibiotic for example, they are likely to be in the top positions and give the bacteria resistance required respond to this drug. The bacteria then have the right combination of genes to survive and maintain the potential of resistance over the generations.

The results of these studies show how adaptation strategies to face bacterial antibiotics are effective, whether short or long term. They represent precisely the constraints related to the genetics of bacteria, which should take into account public health measures to come to fight against the problem of multidrug resistance.