Drug resistance breakthrough

Antibiotics are becomingly increasing ineffective

Scientists have made a discovery about how antibiotics disrupt the normal function of cells.

They believe the breakthrough could lead to the development of new drugs to overcome the increasing problem of resistance to current antibiotics.

A team from the Medical Research Council (MRC) has uncovered a detailed picture of how cells manufacture proteins by translating the information encoded in genes.

This will hopefully allow us to design new antibiotics in the future that can overcome the growing worldwide problem of resistance

Dr Venki Ramakrishnan, Medical Research Council

It is well established that protein manufacture in cells is controlled by a structure called the ribosome.

But the MRC team has uncovered the detailed process by which the ribosome builds proteins from component parts called amino acids following exact specifications contained in the DNA of the genes.

Sabotage

The work has also revealed that antibiotics work by sabotaging this process.

Antibiotics appear to induce a ribosome to make a "mistake" and allow the wrong amino acid to be added onto the protein chain. This renders the protein ineffective.

Now that this process has become clear, it might be possible to develop new drugs that destroy bacteria during their development.

Lead researcher Dr Venki Ramakrishnan explained: "As biologists we are fascinated by these results because of their fundamental importance in understanding how the genetic code gets translated into proteins.

Widespread interest

"However, pharmaceutical and biotech companies are keenly interested because this research not only helps us to understand how many known antibiotics work but also helps us to understand the basis of certain kinds of resistance.

"This will hopefully allow us to design new antibiotics in the future that can overcome the growing world-wide problem of resistance."

The research is published in the journal Science.