Ribosomes and Antibiotics
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Professor Vassie Ware
Bioscience in the 21st Century
October 31, 2011
PERSPECTIVE
• Widespread use of antibiotics after WWII to improve global health
• Increasing antibiotic resistance in bacterial pathogens coupled with a lag
in the development of additional antibiotics by pharmaceutical companies
poses an escalating problem in the 21st century
20 years ago: ~13,000 deaths/year from bacterial infections.
Today: ~90,000 deaths/year from bacterial infections!!!
• Challenge to design effective new generation antibiotics
• Use of structure-based drug design to develop novel drugs based on high
resolution structures of drug targets and their resistance mutants
• The ribosome is the target of over 50% of existing antibacterial drugs.
High resolution structures of bacterial ribosomal subunits offers new
prospects for developing new drugs with the advent of increasing
bacterial resistance.
General Lecture Outline
1. General information about antibiotics and their targets
2. Bacterial antibiotic resistance
3. Ribosomes as evolutionarily conserved nanomachines
required to make proteins
4. Why study ribosome structure? Why study ribosomes from
different species?
5. How are ribosomes manufactured in bacteria and
eukaryotic cells?
6. Bacterial ribosomes as targets for antibiotics
Antibiotics
• Natural or synthetic compounds that either
kill (bactericidal) or inhibit growth
(bacteriostatic) of bacteria (or other
microorganisms)
• Antibiotics may be classified in several ways.
Most common classification schemes are
based on chemical structure of the antibiotic
Antibacterial agents, suitable for therapy:
Natural –
Derived from natural sources such as fungi and soil bacteria.
Penicillin as the classic example, derived from the fungus Penicillium
Pharmaceutical industry produces penicillin from cultures of
Penicillium chrysogenum that are adapted for high yield
Others: many aminoglycosides from soil bacteria (e.g., streptomycin)
Semi-synthetic -
Natural products that have been chemically modified to improve effectiveness
of the product or to reduce side effects, etc
Examples include the β-lactams ampicillin, amoxicillin, etc, derived from fungi
Completely synthetic –
Products are synthesized completely in the laboratory
Sulfa drugs, folic acid analogs are examples
Antibiotic Targets in Bacterial Cells
Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts et al. 2002
Resistance to Antibiotics
Intrinsic resistance
Some bacteria are naturally more resistant to certain classes of
antibiotics than others (e.g., Gram positive bacteria are more
resistant than Gram negative bacteria to polymixins – a class of
antibiotics that behave as detergents and cause leakiness of the
cell membrane)
Acquired resistance
Bacteria acquire resistance to antibiotics for which they
were previously susceptible. For example, in 10 years’ time
between 1985 and 1995,the percentage of ampicillin-resistant
Shigella (causes intestinal illness) grew from 32% to 67%!
How do bacteria acquire resistance?
Bacteria acquire genes that encode proteins that shield or
protect them from the effects of the antibiotic.
These genes may have arisen by mutation of existing genes
OR
they may have been acquired from other resistant bacteria
through the transfer of genetic information between bacteria
Antibiotic resistance genes are often carried on plasmids
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“Clever tricks” by bacteria to inactivate antibiotics:
1. Synthesis of enzymes that breakdown the antibiotic:
Penicillinase (a type of β-lactamase, breaks the β-lactam
ring, thereby destroying the antibiotic). Other enzyme
types are also prevalent (e.g., cephalosporinases)
2. Modification of their own enzymes that would normally
be targets of the antibiotic (e.g., DNA gyrase)
Clever tricks, continued:
3. Synthesis of “pumps” inserted into the cell
membrane to remove the antibiotic from the
interior of the cell
4. Addition of chemical groups onto the target
so that the antibiotic does not recognize the target.
(e.g., erythromycin resistance)
5. Modification of the antibiotic so that it no
longer recognizes its target (e.g., kanamycin
resistance)
6. Modification of the peptidoglycan cell wall
to avoid the antibiotic effect
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009
"for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome"
Venkatraman
Thomas A. Steitz Ada E. Yonath
Ramakrishnan
MRC Laboratory Yale University Weizmann Institute
of Molecular Biology New Haven, CT of Science
Cambridge, UK Rehovot, Israel
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Ribosome
Synthesis in
Bacteria Ribosomal
genes (rDNA)
transcription
Pre-rRNA
rRNA processing **
Ribosomal subunit
assembly
Ribosome
translating
mRNA
Eukaryotic Ribosome
Synthesis
Bacterial ribosome composition
Eukaryotic ribosome composition
ADDITIONAL 28S
60
60S
S60S
5.8S
rRNA
40S
40S
ADDITIONAL 18S
Erythromycin – a macrolide antibiotic that blocks protein synthesis
by binding to bacterial ribosomes but not to eukaryotic ribosomes
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The aminoglycoside antibiotic paromomycin binds to the small
ribosomal subunit and blocks protein synthesis.
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Antibiotics Targeting the Large Ribosomal Subunit of Bacteria
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Classes of Antibiotics Affecting the Small Ribosomal Subunit in Bacteria
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SUMMARY:
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Bacterial antibiotic resistance is an increasingly serious global health problem
Development of new generations of antibiotics becomes increasingly important
Ribosomes (as essential complexes for making proteins in all cells)
are one of many antibiotic targets
Ribosomes have many evolutionarily conserved features but
important structural differences exist between bacterial
and eukaryotic ribosomes
Ribosome structural differences between organisms can be
exploited as potential targets in drug development
