Professor Joanna Slusky of the University of Kansas

"Targeting Antibiotic Efflux of Membrane Barrels: Inhibition and Evolution"

Although outer membrane proteins facilitate all the varieties of processes a Gram negative bacterium requires to interact with its environment, all outer membrane proteins have the same fold-- an up-down beta barrel. I will describe new theories on how this one fold evolved so many functions. One particular function of this fold is broad-spectrum antibiotic efflux. I will share two recently developed methods to disable this efflux: one that prevents oligomerization of the beta barrel and one that plugs the pore.