What is it about?
The SOS Response is a stress response in bacteria triggered by DNA damage. The brilliant Miroslav Radman had discerned the key features in 1975 when he described the SOS as "an inducible DNA repair [pathway] which is accompanied by mutagenesis...” The mutagenesis aspect is what we studied in this paper. Antibiotics and other drugs and stressors that damage DNA in bacteria trigger the SOS response. Previously, we showed that the SOS response was induced by antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin within an individual bacterial strain. In this paper, we show that induction of the SOS response can trigger transfer of antibiotic resistance genes from one species of bacteria to another.
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Why is it important?
In addition to antibiotics, the SOS response is induced by many other kinds of drugs, including drugs used for cancer chemotherapy, antiviral drugs, and by chemicals used in agriculture, such as the herbicide paraquat.
Perspectives
Since I am involved in Antibiotic Stewardship at my hospital, this paper has relevance to Stewardship and to preventing the spread of multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs).
Dr John K. Crane
Univ. at Buffalo
See above for why this is important.
Dr John K. Crane
University at Buffalo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Zinc Blockade of SOS Response Inhibits Horizontal Transfer of Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Enteric Bacteria, Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, November 2018, Frontiers,
DOI: 10.3389/fcimb.2018.00410.
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