Bacteria make use of a number of natural resistance strategies to overcome antibiotics. And it seems that this bacterial toolbox may be much more varied than previously thought. Scientists at the Institut Pasteur, in collaboration with Inserm, INRA, the CNRS and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, have recently revealed an entirely unknown resistance mechanism in Listeria monocytogenes bacteria. When these bacteria come into contact with antibiotics that target ribosomes and block protein synthesis, they are capable of splitting their ribosomes in two to recycle them and to restart protein production. This mechanism depends on the expression of the gene hflXr. The findings were published in the journal PNAS.

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