Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Trna Methylation Is A Global Determinant Of Bacterial Multi-Drug Resistance., Isao Masuda, Ryuma Matsubara, Thomas Christian, Enrique R. Rojas, Srujana S. Yadavalli, Lisheng Zhang, Mark Goulian, Leonard J. Foster, Kerwyn Casey Huang, Ya-Ming Hou

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Faculty Papers

Gram-negative bacteria are intrinsically resistant to drugs because of their double-membrane envelope structure that acts as a permeability barrier and as an anchor for efflux pumps. Antibiotics are blocked and expelled from cells and cannot reach high-enough intracellular concentrations to exert a therapeutic effect. Efforts to target one membrane protein at a time have been ineffective. Here, we show that m ¹ G37-tRNA methylation determines the synthesis of a multitude of membrane proteins via its control of translation at proline codons near the start of open reading frames. Decreases in m ¹ G37 levels in Escherichia coli and Salmonella impair …