Proteome studies of bacterial antibiotic resistance mechanisms.

Ever since antibiotics were used to help humanity battle infectious diseases, microorganisms straight away fought back. Antibiotic resistance mechanisms indeed provide microbes with possibilities to by-pass and survive the action of antibiotic drugs. Several methods have been employed to identify these microbial resistance mechanisms in an ongoing effort to reduce the steadily increasing number of treatment failures due to multi-drug-resistant microbes. Proteomics has evolved to an important tool for this area of research. Following rapid advances in whole genome sequencing, proteomic technologies have been widely used to investigate microbial gene expression. This review highlights the contribution of proteomics in identifying microbial drug resistance mechanisms. It summarizes different proteomic studies on bacteria resistant to different antibiotic drugs. The review further includes an overview of the methodologies used, as well as lists key proteins identified, thus providing the reader not only a summary of research already done, but also directions for future research. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Trends in Microbial Proteomics.