The presumption follows that a similar approach targeting
bacterial enzymes may counteract the efflux mechanism common in Gram-negative resistance.
Unlike bleach and soap that destroy and dislodge germs, triclosan works by interfering with a specific
bacterial enzyme, which not all bacteria have.
In the 1970s, the
bacterial enzyme amylase replaced acid conversion in processing corn starch to glucose.
To make corn syrup commercially, instead of using an acid, a mixture of corn starch and water is treated first with alpha amylase, a
bacterial enzyme that breaks the starch down into oligosaccharides, followed by the addition of gammaamylase, an enzyme isolated from the Aspergillus fungus that converts some of the oligosaccharides to glucose.
Fidaxomicin is the first in a new class of antibiotics called macrocycles, which inhibit the
bacterial enzyme RNA polymerase, resulting in the death of C.
As early as the 1960s, researchers knew that the
bacterial enzyme beta-glucoronidase converts a plant chemical called cycasin into a carcinogen.
It produces blue colonies on MI Blue under ambient light doe to the breakdown of IBDG by the
bacterial enzyme [beta]-Glucurondase.
Sulfamethoxazole inhibits dihydropteroate synthase, the
bacterial enzyme that catalyzes the incorporation of p-aminobenzoid acid into dihydropteroic acid, the immediate precursor of folic acid, while trimethoprim was specifically synthesized as an inhibitor of dihydrofolate-reductase (40).
The
bacterial enzyme unwittingly acts as a device that hides the enemy, he says--perhaps even encouraging the bacteria to take in more of the toxic drug than they ordinarily would.