Antibiotics induce redox-related physiological alterations as part of their lethality

Deeper understanding of antibiotic-induced physiological responses is critical to identifying means for enhancing our current antibiotic arsenal. Bactericidal antibiotics with diverse targets have been hypothesized to kill bacteria, in part, by inducing production of damaging reactive species. This notion has been supported by many groups, but recently challenged. Here we robustly test the hypothesis using biochemical, enzymatic and biophysical assays along with genetic and phenotypic experiments. We first used a novel intracellular hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) sensor, together with a chemically diverse panel of fluorescent dyes sensitive to an array of reactive species, to demonstrate that antibiotics broadly induce redox stress. Subsequent gene expression analyses reveal that complex antibiotic-induced oxidative stress responses are distinct from canonical responses generated by supra-physiological levels of H2O2. We next developed a method to dynamically quantify cellular respiration and found that bactericidal antibiotics elevate oxygen consumption, indicating significant alterations to bacterial redox physiology. We further show that catalase or DNA mismatch repair enzyme overexpression, as well as antioxidant pre-treatment limit antibiotic lethality, indicating that reactive oxygen species causatively contribute to antibiotic killing. Critically, the killing efficacy of antibiotics was diminished under strict anaerobic conditions, but could be enhanced by exposure to molecular oxygen or addition of alternative electron acceptors, suggesting that environmental factors play a role in killing cells physiologically primed for death. This work provides direct evidence that bactericidal antibiotics, downstream of their target-specific interactions, induce complex redox alterations that contribute to cellular damage and death, thus supporting an evolving, expanded model of antibiotic lethality.

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Dwyer DJ, Belenky PA, Yang JH, MacDonald IC, Martell JD, Takahashi N, Chan CT, Lobritz MA, Braff D, Schwarz EG, Ye JD, Pati M, Vercruysse M, Ralifo PS, Allison KR, Khalil AS, Ting AY, Walker GC, Collins JJ