Week 14.1 Antimicrobials Flashcards
What things are used to to kill bacteria or inhibit their growth?
antibiotics and disinfectants
Examples of antibiotics and disinfectants
-Penicillin prevents bacteria from building a cell wall (block peptidoglycan)
-Chloramphenicol and tetracycline inhibit protein synthesis
-Rifampicin inhibits RNA transcription
-Alcohol dissolves bacterial membrane
Why don’t antibiotics or disinfectants kill us like they do bacteria?
We have slight structure differences in ribosomes so they don’t target our cells
Antibiotics bind to…
proteins
Competitive inhibition vs noncompetitive inhibition
-Competitive: competitive inhibitor and substrate compete for active site
-Noncompetitive: competitive inhibitor binds to allosteric site that induces a conformational change in the active site, preventing the substrate from binding to it
Bacteriostatic
the growth of the bacteria is inhibited but the bacteria are not necessarily killed
Bactericidal
the bacteria are killed
Six primary antibiotic targets in bacteria
- Cell membrane
- Cell wall synthesis
- DNA replication
- RNA synthesis
- Protein synthesis
- Metabolism (folic acid synthesis)
Other special antibiotic targets in bacteria
- Biofilm formation
- Flagella/pilli
- Quorum sensing
What do you need to know to predict how an antibiotic will affect a cell?
- Antibiotic’s target
- Target’s function
What is the bacterial plasma membrane?
A phospholipid bilayer with a variety of embedded proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates that perform various functions for the cell
Functions of embedded proteins
- Transport
- Enzymatic activity
- Signal transduction
- Cell-cell recognition
- Intracellular joining
- Attachment to the cytoskeleton and ECM
Antibiotics that disrupt the bacterial membrane
- Daptomycin: causes depolarization of cytoplasmic membrane, resulting in disruption of ionic concentration gradients
- Bacitracin: inhibits export of peptidoglycan precursors
- Polymyxins: disrupts the membrane
Isotonic solution
no net movement of water particles; cell membrane is attached to cell wall
Hypertonic solution
water particles move OUT of the cell; cell membrane shrinks and detaches from cell wall (plasmolysis)
Hypotonic solution
water particles move INTO the cell; cell wall counteracts osmotic pressure to prevent swelling and lysis
Peptidoglycan
a polymer composed of alternating N-acetylmuramic acid (NAM) and N-acetylglucosamine (NAG)
-NAM: peptide sidechain
-NAG: does not have peptide sidechain
NAG-NAM synthesis
- NAM is synthesized in the cytoplasm and linked to UDP
- NAM is linked to bactoprenol
- NAG is added to NAM
- Bactoprenol flips NAM-NAG to periplasm
- Transpeptidase polymerizes the disaccharides into the growing peptidoglycan chain (crosslinking occurs)
- Bactoprenol flips back to cytoplasm
Why are peptide chains on 2 stacked N-acetylmuramic acids crosslinked?
to stabilize the layers
What is separation of bacterial daughter cells controlled by?
FtsZ protein
How do bacterial cells divide using FtsZ protein?
FtsZ proteins assembled along the membrane and form the Z ring. Then the Z ring is anchored to the membrane and pinches together to cleave the cells.