Persister formation in Escherichia coli can be inhibited by treatment with nitric oxide.

Publication Year
2016

Type

Journal Article
Abstract

Bacterial persisters are phenotypic variants that survive extraordinary concentrations of antibiotics, and are thought to underlie the propensity of biofilm infections to relapse. Unfortunately many aspects of persister physiology remain ill-defined, which prevents progress toward eradicating the phenotype. Recently, we identified respiration within non-growing Escherichia coli populations as a potential target for the elimination type I persisters, which are those that arise from passage through stationary phase. Here we discovered that nitric oxide (NO) treatment at the onset of stationary phase significantly reduced type I persister formation through its ability to inhibit respiration. NO decreased protein and RNA degradation in stationary phase cells, and produced populations that were more fit for protein synthesis and growth resumption upon introduction into fresh media than untreated controls. Overall, this data shows that NO, which is a therapeutically-relevant compound, has the potential to decrease the incidence of recurrent infections from persisters.

Journal
Free Radic Biol Med
Volume
93
Pages
145-54
Date Published
2016 Apr
ISSN Number
1873-4596
Alternate Journal
Free Radic Biol Med
PMCID
PMC4898466
PMID
26849946