Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a bacterial infection that has become resistant to most of the antibiotics used to treat regular staph infections. Duke computer scientist Bruce Donald and collaborators at the University of Connecticut are working to develop new enzyme inhibitors to fight MRSA. In research published in PLOS Computational Biology, the team discovered how a single small mutation makes a big difference in drug efficacy.
They examined dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR), an enzyme that antibiotics target to fight MRSA. Drugs that inhibit DHFR work a bit like locks and keys; they bind to enzymes in MRSA, which have a specific three-dimensional structure that only allows molecules that fit precisely to attach to them.
A mutation can change the structure of a bacterial enzyme and cause drugs to lose effectiveness. The F98Y mutation is a well-known resistance…
