Inhibition of Mutation and Combating of the Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance (Cirz et al)

PLOS(3)0001-0010

The authors show that the interfering with the protease LexA renders pathogenic E.Coli unable to evolve resistance to a couple antibiotics. They show that lexA cleavage is induced during RecBC-mediated repair of DNA damage and that this results in the derepression of the SOS-regulated polymersaes Pol II, Pol IV, and Pol V which collaborate to induce (resistance confering) mutations.

Relevance
Cells have a variety of methods to up-regulate mutations in response to stress. (see also references [7-15] in this paper). Knocking down these mechanisms may be a method for increasing the genetic stability of our devices.