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Quantification of Fluoroquinolone Uptake through the Outer Membrane Channel OmpF of Escherichia coli.


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Authors

Bajaj, Harsha 
Pagliara, Stefano 
Maier, Theresa 
Braun, Yvonne 

Abstract

Decreased drug accumulation is a common cause of antibiotic resistance in microorganisms. However, there are few reliable general techniques capable of quantifying drug uptake through bacterial membranes. We present a semiquantitative optofluidic assay for studying the uptake of autofluorescent drug molecules in single liposomes. We studied the effect of the Escherichia coli outer membrane channel OmpF on the accumulation of the fluoroquinolone antibiotic, norfloxacin, in proteoliposomes. Measurements were performed at pH 5 and pH 7, corresponding to two different charge states of norfloxacin that bacteria are likely to encounter in the human gastrointestinal tract. At both pH values, the porins significantly enhance drug permeation across the proteoliposome membranes. At pH 5, where norfloxacin permeability across pure phospholipid membranes is low, the porins increase drug permeability by 50-fold on average. We estimate a flux of about 10 norfloxacin molecules per second per OmpF trimer in the presence of a 1 mM concentration gradient of norfloxacin. We also performed single channel electrophysiology measurements and found that the application of transmembrane voltages causes an electric field driven uptake in addition to concentration driven diffusion. We use our results to propose a physical mechanism for the pH mediated change in bacterial susceptibility to fluoroquinolone antibiotics.

Description

Keywords

Anti-Bacterial Agents, Escherichia coli, Fluorescence, Fluoroquinolones, Hydrogen-Ion Concentration, Microbial Sensitivity Tests, Porins, Structure-Activity Relationship

Journal Title

J Am Chem Soc

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0002-7863
1520-5126

Volume Title

Publisher

American Chemical Society (ACS)
Sponsorship
European Research Council (261101)
This work was supported by a European Research Council (ERC) Grant (261101 Passmembrane) to UFK. JC acknowledges support from an Internal Graduate Studentship, Trinity College, Cambridge, and a Research Studentship from the Cambridge Philosophical Society. SP was supported by the Leverhulme Trust through an Early Career Fellowship. TM acknowledges support from the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation and the German National Merit Foundation. HB, YB and MW are part of the TRANSLOCATION consortium and have received support from the Innovative Medicines Joint Undertaking under grant agreement 115525, the European Union’s seventh framework program (FP7/2007-2013), and European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associates companies in-kind contribution. We thank Avelino Javer for help with the MATLAB scripts and Catalin Chimerel for helpful discussions.