The A–Z of bacterial translation inhibitors

Abstract

Protein synthesis is one of the major targets in the cell for antibiotics. This review endeavors to provide a comprehensive “post-ribosome structure” A–Z of the huge diversity of antibiotics that target the bacterial translation apparatus, with an emphasis on correlating the vast wealth of biochemical data with more recently available ribosome structures, in order to understand function. The binding site, mechanism of action, and modes of resistance for 26 different classes of protein synthesis inhibitors are presented, ranging from ABT-773 to Zyvox. In addition to improving our understanding of the process of translation, insight into the mechanism of action of antibiotics is essential to the development of novel and more effective antimicrobial agents to combat emerging bacterial resistance to many clinically-relevant drugs.

Keywords::

• Antibiotics
• inhibitors
• protein synthesis
• resistance
• ribosome
• translation

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (WI3285/1-1).

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Editor: Michael M. Cox