Bactericidal Antibiotics Induce Toxic Metabolic Perturbations that Lead to Cellular Damage.

Understanding how antibiotics impact bacterial metabolism may provide insight into their mechanisms of action and could lead to enhanced therapeutic methodologies. Here, we profiled the metabolome of Escherichia coli after treatment with three different classes of bactericidal antibiotics (?-lactams, aminoglycosides, quinolones). These treatments induced a similar set of metabolic changes after 30 min that then diverged into more distinct profiles at later time points.

Antibiotics induce redox-related physiological alterations as part of their lethality.

Deeper understanding of antibiotic-induced physiological responses is critical to identifying means for enhancing our current antibiotic arsenal. Bactericidal antibiotics with diverse targets have been hypothesized to kill bacteria, in part by inducing production of damaging reactive species. This notion has been supported by many groups but has been challenged recently.

Mechanical stretch and shear flow induced reorganization and recruitment of fibronectin in fibroblasts.

It was our objective to study the role of mechanical stimulation on fibronectin (FN) reorganization and recruitment by exposing fibroblasts to shear fluid flow and equibiaxial stretch. Mechanical stimulation was also combined with a Rho inhibitor to probe their coupled effects on FN. Mechanically stimulated cells revealed a localization of FN around the cell periphery as well as an increase in FN fibril formation.