Loading...
Citations
Altmetric:
Advisors
Editors
Other Contributors
Issue Date
2020-03-17
Submitted date
Files
Loading...
Open Access publication
Adobe PDF, 807.67 KB
Other Titles
Abstract
Our body is colonized by a vast array of bacteria the sum of which forms our microbiota. The gut alone harbors >1,000 bacterial species. An understanding of their individual or synergistic contributions to human health and disease demands means to interfere with their functions on the species level. Most of the currently available antibiotics are broad-spectrum, thus too unspecific for a selective depletion of a single species of interest from the microbiota. Programmable RNA antibiotics in the form of short antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) promise to achieve precision manipulation of bacterial communities. These ASOs are coupled to small peptides that carry them inside the bacteria to silence mRNAs of essential genes, for example, to target antibiotic-resistant pathogens as an alternative to standard antibiotics. There is already proof-of-principle with diverse bacteria, but many open questions remain with respect to true species specificity, potential off-targeting, choice of peptides for delivery, bacterial resistance mechanisms and the host response. While there is unlikely a one-fits-all solution for all microbiome species, I will discuss how recent progress in bacterial RNA biology may help to accelerate the development of programmable RNA antibiotics for microbiome editing and other applications.
Citation
Mol Microbiol. 2020;113(3):550‐559. doi:10.1111/mmi.14476.
Publisher
Journal
PubMed ID
PubMed Central ID
Additional Links
Embedded video
Type
Review
Other
Other
Language
en
Description
Series/Report no.
ISSN
EISSN
1365-2958
ISBN
ISMN
Gov't Doc #
Sponsors
License
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International