title: Antibiotics: Precious Goods in Changing Times.
abstract: Antibiotics represent a first line of defense of diverse microorganisms, which produce and use antibiotics to counteract natural enemies or competitors for nutritional resources in their nearby environment. For antimicrobial activity, nature has invented a great variety of mechanisms of antibiotic action that involve the perturbation of essential bacterial structures or biosynthesis pathways of macromolecules such as the bacterial cell wall, DNA, RNA, or proteins, thereby threatening the specific microbial lifestyle and eventually even survival. However, along with highly inventive modes of antibiotic action, nature also developed a comparable set of resistance mechanisms that help the bacteria to circumvent antibiotic action. Microorganisms have evolved specific adaptive responses that allow appropriately reacting to the presence of antimicrobial agents, ensuring survival during antimicrobial stress. In times of rapid development and spread of antibiotic (multi-)resistance, we need to explore new, resistance-breaking strategies to counteract bacterial infections. This chapter intends to give an overview of common antibiotics and their target pathways. It will also discuss recent advances in finding new antibiotics with novel modes of action, illustrating that nature's repertoire of innovative new antimicrobial agents has not been fully exploited yet, and we still might find new drugs that help to evade established antimicrobial resistance strategies.
authors.affiliation: Interfaculty Institute for Microbiology and Infection Medicine, Microbial Bioactive Compounds, University of Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 28, 72076, Tübingen, Germany. peter.sass@uni-tuebingen.de.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sass
mesh_terms: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology*; D001419:Bacteria / Q000187:drug effects / Q000378:metabolism; D002473:Cell Wall / Q000187:drug effects; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000096:biosynthesis; D014176:Protein Biosynthesis / Q000187:drug effects; D012329:RNA, Bacterial / Q000096:biosynthesis
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D012329:RNA, Bacterial
keywords: Antibiotic resistance; Antimicrobial agents; Drug discovery; MRSA; Mode of action