Acidification of Cytoplasm in Escherichia coli Provides a Strategy to Cope with Stress and Facilitates Development of Antibiotic Resistance.

ABSTRACT: Awareness of the problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has escalated, and drug-resistant infections are named among the most urgent issues facing clinicians today. Bacteria can acquire resistance to antibiotics by a variety of mechanisms that, at times, involve changes in their metabolic status, thus altering diverse biochemical reactions, many of them pH-dependent. In this work, we found that modulation of the cytoplasmic pH (pH_i) of Escherichia coli provides a thus far unexplored strategy to support resistance. We show here that the acidification of the cytoplasmic pH is a previously unrecognized consequence of the activation of the marRAB operon. The acidification itself contributes to the full implementation of the resistance phenotype. We measured the pH_i of

SUBMITTER: Reyes-Fernandez EZ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7305162 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature