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  • IN BRIEF

Selectively targeting antibiotic-resistant bacteria

  1. Sarah Crunkhorn
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Targeted antimicrobials, capable of killing antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ABR), are urgently needed. To target ABR Vibrio cholerae, López-Igual et al. designed a conjugative antimicrobial plasmid containing a type II bacterial gyrase toxin, split by an intein (to control toxin production and avoid toxicity), which can only be activated by ToxR (a transcriptional activator in V. cholerae). Specific killing of ABR was mediated by inclusion of the antitoxin in the plasmid, which is not produced if the bacteria express antibiotic resistance genes. The antimicrobial selectively killed pathogenic ABR V. cholerae in a mixed population of bacteria and in zebrafish and crustacean larvae.

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Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 18, 420 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41573-019-00080-1

References

  1. López-Igual, R. et al. Engineered toxin–intein antimicrobials can selectively target and kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria in mixed populations. Nat. Biotechnol. 11, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0105-3 (2019).

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