Proteomic investigation into the action mechanism of berberine against Streptococcus pyogenes.

Proteomic investigation into the action mechanism of berberine against Streptococcus pyogenes. J Proteomics. 2020 Jan 22;:103666 Authors: Du GF, Le YJ, Sun X, Yang XY, He QY Abstract Berberine is an isoquinoline alkaloid found in many plants. Although berberine is known to possess the antibacterial activity against Streptococcus pyogenes, the mechanism underlying it is not fully understood. In the current study, to investigate the molecular mechanism how berberine exerts its antibacterial effects, quantitative proteomics was conducted to investigate differential expressed proteins in S. pyogenes in response to berberine treatment. KEGG pathways analysis revealed that berberine regulated proteins were mainly involved in carbohydrate metabolism, fatty acid biosynthesis, pyrimidine metabolism, RNA degradation, ribosome, purine metabolism, DNA replication and repair and oxidative phosphorylation pathways. Moreover, we found that berberine induced the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), whereas inhibition of ROS generation with antioxidant N-acetyl L-cysteine could block the berberine induced antibacterial effects. Collectively, we demonstrated that berberine exerts its antibacterial effects by perturbing carbohydrate metabolism, which therefore generate ROS to damage the DNA, protein and lipids biosynthesis, ultimately trigger cell lethality. These findings provide novel insights into the mechanism of berberine as an antimicro...
Source: Journal of Proteomics - Category: Biochemistry Authors: Tags: J Proteomics Source Type: research