Strategies and molecular tools to fight antimicrobial resistance: resistome, transcriptome, and antimicrobial peptides.

ABSTRACT: The increasing number of antibiotic resistant bacteria motivates prospective research toward discovery of new antimicrobial active substances. There are, however, controversies concerning the cost-effectiveness of such research with regards to the description of new substances with novel cellular interactions, or description of new uses of existing substances to overcome resistance. Although examination of bacteria isolated from remote locations with limited exposure to humans has revealed an absence of antibiotic resistance genes, it is accepted that these genes were both abundant and diverse in ancient living organisms, as detected in DNA recovered from Pleistocene deposits (30,000 years ago). Indeed, even before the first clinical use of antibiotics more than 60 years ago, resistant org

SUBMITTER: Tavares LS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3876575 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature