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JAC Advance Access originally published online on May 30, 2006
Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy 2006 58(2):444-448; doi:10.1093/jac/dkl225
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Mechanisms of the post-antibiotic effects induced by rifampicin and gentamicin in Escherichia coli

William Stubbings, Julieanne Bostock, Eileen Ingham and Ian Chopra*

Antimicrobial Research Centre and Research Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

Received 7 November 2005; returned 28 February 2006; revised 8 March 2006; accepted 9 May 2006

*Corresponding author. Tel: +44-113-343-5604; Fax: +44-113-343-5638; E-mail: i.chopra{at}leeds.ac.uk

Objectives: The mechanisms by which antibiotics induce a post-antibiotic effect in susceptible bacteria are poorly understood. To explore the mechanisms more fully we examined the recovery of macromolecular synthesis in Escherichia coli during gentamicin- and rifampicin-induced post-antibiotic effects.

Methods: E. coli ATCC 25922 was exposed to rifampicin and to gentamicin at 5x MIC for 60 min to induce post-antibiotic effects. The antibiotics were then removed from the culture medium by washing the cells. The rates of DNA, RNA and protein synthesis during the post-antibiotic effect and recovery periods were subsequently determined by measuring the incorporation of radiolabelled uridine, thymidine and leucine into trichloroacetic acid precipitable material.

Results: Recovery of E. coli ATCC 25922 from the rifampicin-induced post-antibiotic effect coincided with the recovery of RNA and protein synthesis. Recovery from the gentamicin-induced post-antibiotic effect coincided with the recovery of protein synthesis.

Conclusions: These data support the hypothesis that antibiotic molecules retained in the cell mediate the post-antibiotic effect by suppressing the biochemical activity of their molecular targets.

Keywords: E. coli , PAE , macromolecular synthesis , antibiotic action


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