Reviews on the Mechanisms of Antibiotic Action
A special issue of Antibiotics (ISSN 2079-6382). This special issue belongs to the section "Mechanisms and Structural Biology of Antibiotic Action".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2023) | Viewed by 2334
Special Issue Editor
Interests: biomechanics; silver nanoparticle antibiotic action; metal ions in epigenetics; bioactive supramolecular systems; 3D printing and biofilms
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The development of novel long-lived antibiotics has settled down into trench warfare reminiscent of the Great War of 1914–16, with each side obtaining minor but short-lived advantages. Much of the problem arises from a lack of knowledge and understanding of the mechanisms of action of the bioactive molecules used to treat infectious diseases.
At the start of the 21st century, a rapid decline in the useful lifetime of many anti-bacterial drugs has been observed, while for some medications, such as silver, the useful lifetime is now in excess of five thousand years. Why the rather large difference? Simply a difference in the mechanisms of action. Modern anti-bacterials are, in general, highly specific desactivators of certain proteins; unfortunately, they strongly resemble natural anti-bacterials, and so bacteria are ready to deal with them, hence the low activity lifetimes.
Systems such as silver have no clear targets. Action via cell wall destruction, DNA inactivation, enzyme blocking, reactive oxygen species formation, cell destruction, and combinations of all of these are proposed. This brings us to the problem of how to analyse, at the molecular level, cell activity, which requires new analytical methods.
From there it will be found that even simple analyses of the constituents of cells and tissues are, in fact, sadly lacking.
Hence, when suitable information finally becomes available, it should be possible to build modeling systems capable of giving correct route maps to new and novel long-lifetime antibiotics.
Prof. Dr. Anthony William Coleman
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- anti-bacterials
- anti-virals
- anti-fungals
- analyticals for intra-cellular analysis
- molecular mechanics
- biomechanics
- cellular constituents
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