Specificity and tunability of efflux pumps: A new role for the proton gradient?

ABSTRACT: Efflux pumps that transport antibacterial drugs out of bacterial cells have broad specificity, commonly leading to broad spectrum resistance and limiting treatment strategies for infections. It remains unclear how efflux pumps can maintain this broad spectrum specificity to diverse drug molecules while limiting the efflux of other cytoplasmic content. We have investigated the origins of this broad specificity using theoretical models informed by the experimentally determined structural and kinetic properties of efflux pumps. We developed a set of mathematical models describing operation of efflux pumps as a discrete cyclic stochastic process across a network of states characterizing pump conformations and the presence/absence of bound ligands and protons. These include a minimal three-stat

SUBMITTER: Gerry M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11798531 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature