Postdoctoral Scholars | Pharmacology | School of Medicine

Acinetobacter baumannii is a Gram-negative, nonfermentative bacillus, which is considered as an important nosocomial pathogen causing pneumonia, urinary tract infections, bacteremia, septicemia, and meningitis. Infected by A. baumannii is extremely difficult to cure. One major mechanism that A. baumannii uses to mediate antibiotic resistance is the expression of multidrug efflux pumps, especially those belonging to the resistance-nodulation-cell division (RND) superfamily. The most clinically relevant RND-type multidrug efflux in A. baumannii is the AdeJ membrane protein, which extrudes multiple classes of antibiotics, such as tetracyclines, aminoglycosides, β-lactams, and fluoroquinolones. However, the substrate recognition mechanism of AdeJ is still unknown. Thus, an atomic level structure of A. baumannii AdeJ multidrug efflux pump bound with substrate complex will be the key point to reveal a mechanism on how AdeJ recognize and extrude the antibiotics. These data in the project will provide an essential structural foundation for future anti-bacterial drug discovery.