In research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Saint Louis University Mee-Ngan F. Yap, Ph.D., discovered new information about how antibiotics like azithromycin stop staph infections, and why staph sometimes becomes resistant to drugs.
Her evidence suggests a universal, evolutionary mechanism by which the bacteria eludes this kind of drug, offering scientists a way to improve the effectiveness of antibiotics to which bacteria have become resistant.
Staphylococcus aureus (familiar to many as the common and sometimes difficult to treat staph infection) is a strain of bacteria that frequently has become resistant to antibiotics, a development that has been challenging for doctors and dangerous for patients with severe infections.
Yap and her research team studied staph that had been treated with the antibiotic azithromycin and learned two things: One, it turns out that the antibiotic isn't as effective as was previously thought. And two, the process that the bacteria use to evade the antibiotic appears to be an evolutionary mechanism that the bacteria developed in order to delay genetic replication when beneficial.
The team studied the way antibiotics work within the ribosome, the site where bacteria translates the genetic codes into protein. When the bacteria encounter a potential problem in copying its genetic material, as posed by an antibiotic, it has a mechanism to thwart antibiotic inhibition by means of "ribosome stalling" that is mediated by special upstream peptide elements.
Ref http://www.pnas.org/content/111/43/15379.abstract?sid=94feec3e-058d-4239-97fb-bb9db8f148bb
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