Gentamicin is an aminoglycoside antibiotic used to treat several types of bacterial infections. This may include bone infections, endocarditis, pelvic inflammatory disease, meningitis, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, and sepsis among others. It can be given intravenously, by intramuscular injection, or topically. Topical formulations may be used in burns or for infections of the outside of the eye. It is often only used for two days until bacterial cultures determine what specific antibiotics the infection is sensitive to. The dose required should be monitored by blood testing.
Read the full article on Wikipedia“Gentamicin is a bactericidal antibiotic that works by binding the 30S subunit of the bacterial ribosome, negatively impacting protein synthesis. The primary mechanism of action is generally accepted to work through ablating the ability of the ribosome to discriminate on proper transfer RNA and messenger RNA interactions. Typically, if an incorrect tRNA pairs with an mRNA codon at the aminoacyl site of the ribosome, adenosines 1492 and 1493 are excluded from the interaction and retract, signaling the ribosome to reject the aminoacylated tRNA::Elongation Factor Thermo-Unstable complex. However, when gentamicin binds at helix 44 of the 16S rRNA, it forces the adenosines to maintain the position they take when there is a correct, or cognate, match between aa-tRNA and mRNA. This leads to the acceptance of incorrect aa-tRNAs, causing the ribosome to synthesize proteins with wrong amino acids placed throughout (roughly every 1 in 500). The non-functional, mistranslated proteins misfold and aggregate, eventually leading to death of the bacterium. Moreover, it has been observed that gentamicin can cause a substantial slowdown in the overall elongation rate of peptide chains in live bacterial cells, independent of the misincorporation of amino acids. This finding indicates that gentamicin not only induces errors in protein synthesis but also broadly hampers the efficiency of the translation process itself. An additional mechanism has been proposed based on crystal structures of gentamicin in a secondary binding site at helix 69 of the 23S rRNA, which interacts with helix 44 and proteins that recognize stop codons. At this secondary site, gentamicin is believed to preclude interactions of the ribosome with ribosome recycling factors, causing the two subunits of the ribosome to stay complexed even after translation completes, creating a pool of inactive ribosomes that can no longer re-initiate and translate new proteins.”
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