Serratia marcescens is an important nosocomial agent known for causing various infections in immunocompromised individuals. Resistance of this organism to a broad spectrum of antibiotics makes the treatment of infections very difficult. This study was undertaken to identify multidrug resistance efflux pumps in S. marcescens. Three mutant strains of S. marcescens were isolated in vitro by the se...

Recent experiments have shown that drug efflux pump deficiency not only increases the susceptibility of pathogens to antibiotics, but also seems to "mask" the effects of mutations, that decrease the affinities of drugs to their intracellular targets, on the growth rates of drug-exposed bacteria. That is, in the presence of drugs, the growth rates of drug-exposed WT and target mutated strains ar...

Over-expression of AdeABC efflux pump stimulated continuously by the mutated AdeRS two component system has been found to result in antimicrobial resistance, even tigecycline (TGC) resistance, in multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (MRAB). Although the insertion sequence, ISAba1, contributes to one of the AdeRS mutations, the detail mechanism remains unclear. In the present study we col...

Acquisition of the extracellular tetracycline (TC) resistance plasmid pAST2 affected host gene expression and phenotype in the oil-degrading soil bacterium, Acinetobacter oleivorans DR1. Whole-transcriptome profiling of DR1 cells harboring pAST2 revealed that all the plasmid genes were highly expressed under TC conditions, and the expression levels of many host chromosomal genes were modulated ...

A novel drug efflux gene (named sepA, staphylococcal efflux pump gene) is cloned from antiseptic-resistant mutants of Staphylococcus aureus into Escherichia coli. The sepA gene conferred the reduction of susceptibility to acriflavine and the acceleration of ethidium bromide efflux from the E. coli cells. The sepA (474 bp) encoded the protein that has four predicted transmembrane segments. These...

In this study, the mechanism conferring multiple drug resistance in several strains of flavobacteria isolated from the ovarian fluids of hatchery reared 3-year old brook trout Salvelinus fontinalis was investigated. Metabolic fingerprinting and 16S rRNA gene sequences identified the isolates as Flavobacterium johnsoniae. The isolates exhibited multiple resistances to a wide range of antimicrobi...

Emerging drug resistance in clinical isolates of Staphylococcus aureus might be implicated to the overexpression of NorA efflux pump which is capable of extruding numerous structurally diverse compounds. However, NorA efflux pump is considered as a potential drug target for the development of efflux pump inhibitors. In the present study, NorA model was constructed based on the crystal structure...

The free magnesium concentration in the axoplasm of the giant axon of the squid, Loligo pealei, was estimated by exploting the known sensitivity of the sodium pump to intracellular Mg2+ levels. The Mg-citrate buffer which, when injected into the axon, resulted in no change in sodium efflux was in equilibrium with a Mg2+ level of about 3--4 mM. Optimal [Mg2+] for the sodium pump is somewhat high...

Gram-negative bacteria frequently expel toxic chemicals through tripartite efflux pumps that span both the inner and outer membranes. The three parts are the inner membrane, substrate-binding transporter (or pump); a periplasmic membrane fusion protein (MFP, or adaptor); and an outer membrane-anchored channel. The fusion protein connects the transporter to the channel within the periplasmic spa...

Patented SILA compounds 409 and 421, previously shown to inhibit the efflux pumps of bacteria and cancer cells, have been studied for their ability to reduce or eliminate the presence of plasmids from Escherichia coli strains that have been induced to high level resistance to tetracycline by gradual exposure to increasing concentrations of the antibiotic. The results demonstrate that SILA compo...