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Flinders University researchers are exploring how bacterial cells adapt and resist antimicrobial medications聽鈥� focusing on hospital strain of and its cellular response to important antibiotic colistin.

The WHO has already named antibiotic resistance as one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development with a growing number of infections聽鈥� including pneumonia, tuberculosis, gonorrhoea and salmonellosis聽鈥� becoming harder to treat as antibiotics used to treat them become less effective.

Antibiotic resistance leads to longer hospital stays, higher medical costs and increased mortality, researchers warn.

鈥淎round the world, there are fewer and fewer new antibiotics being identified and produced for medical use聽鈥� and this is compounded by the ever-increasing antibiotic resistance seen in bacterial strains causing infections,鈥� said Flinders microbial researcher Dr Sarah Giles.

鈥淚f we can understand the bacterial mechanisms, such as this, we can potentially apply new therapies to treat patients聽鈥� particularly those with multi-drug-resistant bacterial infections.鈥�

鈥淲e noted that the A baumannii bacterial strain had a two-part signal system which altered its potential response to antibiotic treatment,鈥� Giles observed in the course of the NHMRC-Flinders University graduate scholarship study.

This 鈥榯wo-component signal transduction鈥� involves a response regulator protein in the StkR/S system acting as a repressor; when it is genetically removed, hundreds of transcriptional changes are seen.

The transcriptional changes affect the bacterial cell鈥檚 outer membrane composition, leading to colistin resistance.

鈥淐olistin is known as a 鈥榣ast resort鈥� antibiotic and therefore identifying and understanding the mechanisms contributing to bacterial antibiotic-resistance is critical,鈥� said senior researcher Professor Melissa Brown.

Image caption: Bacteria resistance researcher Dr Sarah Giles. Image courtesy of Flinders University.