Targeting Lipopolysaccharide Transport Induces Membrane Lipid Remodeling and Sensitizes Acinetobacter baumannii to Colistin Treatment
Jianya Luo, Hetianzi Zhang, Jinju Cai, Shuang Zhou, Haijie Zhang, Zhiqiang Wang, Yuan Liu · 2026
Read Targeting Lipopolysaccharide Transport Induces Membrane Lipid Remodeling and Sensitizes Acinetobacter baumannii to Colistin Treatment by Jianya Luo, Hetianzi Zhang, Jinju Cai, Shuang Zhou, Haijie Zhang, Zhiqiang Wang, Yuan Liu (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13336379.txt.
Description
Jianya Luo and co-authors found a compound that resensitizes a dangerous hospital pathogen to an old antibiotic in a 2026 microbiology study. Acinetobacter baumannii shrugs off most drugs, and colistin, a last-resort option, is losing ground too.
A structure-based virtual screen against the bacterium's lipopolysaccharide transport system produced a somatostatin-like peptide, C4. Alone it barely kills, but with colistin the synergy is strong. Lipid and gene analyses showed C4 remodels the membrane, selectively building up phosphatidylglycerol and raising expression of mlaC, a phospholipid transport gene. Deleting mlaC erased both the lipid change and the synergy, while extra copies strengthened it. The work reveals membrane lipid management as a lever for rescuing colistin therapy.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Jianya Luo, Hetianzi Zhang, Jinju Cai, Shuang Zhou, Haijie Zhang, Zhiqiang Wang, Yuan Liu |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 56808 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |