Hydrogen Sulfide Sensitizes Acinetobacter baumannii to Killing by Antibiotics
Name
fmicb-11-01875.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.16 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
826777af0fbd79d742e67fb28e04dd3c
Author(s)
Ng, Say Kong
Ong, Kai Xun
Surendran, Smitha Thamarath
Sinha, Ameya
Lai, Joey Jia Hui
Chen, Jacqueline
Liang, Jiaqi
Tay, Leona Kwan Sing
Cui, Liang
Loo, Hooi Linn
Date Issued
August 2020
Journal
Frontiers in Microbiology
Publisher
Frontiers Media SA
Citation
Ng, Say Kong et al. "Hydrogen Sulfide Sensitizes Acinetobacter baumannii to Killing by Antibiotics." Frontiers in Microbiology 11 (August 2020): 1875 © 2020 The Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The production of endogenous hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) has been shown to confer antibiotic tolerance in all bacteria studied to date. Therefore, this mediator has been speculated to be a universal defense mechanism against antibiotics in bacteria. This is assuming that all bacteria produce endogenous H₂S. In this study, we established that the pathogenic bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii does not produce endogenous H₂S, giving us the opportunity to test the effect of exogenous H₂S on antibiotic tolerance in a bacterium that does not produce it. By using a H₂S-releasing compound to modulate the sulfide content in A. baumannii, we demonstrated that instead of conferring antibiotic tolerance, exogenous H₂S sensitized A. baumannii to multiple antibiotic classes, and was able to revert acquired resistance to gentamicin. Exogenous H₂S triggered a perturbation of redox and energy homeostasis that translated into hypersensitivity to antibiotic killing. We propose that H₂S could be used as an antibiotic-potentiator and resistance-reversion agent in bacteria that do not produce it.
MIT Department
Singapore-MIT Alliance in Research and Technology (SMART)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.01875
