Antibiotics and resistance: the two-sided coin of the mycobacterial cell wall.

ABSTRACT: Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis, is the global leading cause of mortality from an infectious agent. Part of this success relies on the unique cell wall, which consists of a thick waxy coat with tightly packed layers of complexed sugars, lipids and peptides. This coat provides a protective hydrophobic barrier to antibiotics and the host's defences, while enabling the bacterium to spread efficiently through sputum to infect and survive within the macrophages of new hosts. However, part of this success comes at a cost, with many of the current first- and second-line drugs targeting the enzymes involved in cell wall biosynthesis. The flip side of this coin is that resistance to these drugs develops either in the target enzymes or the activation pat

SUBMITTER: Batt SM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7502851 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature