Abstract
The soaring incidences of infection by antimicrobial resistant (AR) pathogens and shortage of effective antibiotics with new mechanisms of action have renewed interest in phage therapy. This scenario is exemplified by resistant tuberculosis (TB), caused by resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Mycobacteriophage SWU1 A321_gp67 encodes a putative GTPase-activating protein. Mycobacterium smegmatis with gp67 overexpression showed changed colony formation and biofilm morphology and supports the efficacy of streptomycin and capreomycin against Mycobacterium. gp67 down-regulated the transcription of genes involved in cell wall and biofilm development. To our knowledge, this is the first report to show that phage protein in addition to lysin or recombination components can synergize with existing antibiotics. Phage components might represent a promising new clue for better antibiotic potentiators.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation [grant numbers 81371851, 81511120001, 81071316, 81271882, 81301394], the New Century Excellent Talents in Universities [grant number NCET110703], the National Megaprojects for Key Infectious Diseases [grant numbers 2008ZX10003006], the Excellent Ph.D. Thesis Fellowship of Southwest University [grant numbers kb2010017, ky2011003], the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant numbers XDJK2011D006,XDJK2012D011,XDJK2012D007,XDJK2013D003,XDJK2014D040, XDJK2016D025,XDJK2016E093], the Graduate Research and Innovation Project of Graduate in Chongqing (CYS14044), and the Chongqing chuying program for high school students (CY150202).
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Yan, S., Xu, M., Duan, X. et al. Mycobacteriophage putative GTPase-activating protein can potentiate antibiotics. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 100, 8169–8177 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-016-7681-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-016-7681-7