Antibiotic resistance is mediated through several distinct mechanisms, most of which are relatively well understood and the clinical importance of which has long been recognized. Until very recently, neither of these statements was readily applicable to the class of resistance mechanism known as target protection, a phenomenon whereby a resistance protein physically associates with an antibiotic target to rescue it from antibiotic-mediated inhibition. In this Review, we summarize recent progress in understanding the nature and importance of target protection. In particular, we describe the molecular basis of the known target protection systems, emphasizing that target protection does not involve a single, uniform mechanism but is instead brought about in several mechanistically distinct ways.

抗生素耐药性是通过几种不同的机制介导的，大多数机制都相对被很好地理解，并且其临床重要性早已为人们所认识。直到最近，这些陈述中的任何一种都不容易适用于称为靶标保护的抗药性机制，该现象是指抗性蛋白与抗生素靶标物理结合，以使其免受抗生素介导的抑制作用。在这篇综述中，我们总结了在了解目标保护的性质和重要性方面的最新进展。特别是，我们描述了已知目标保护系统的分子基础，强调目标保护不涉及单一，统一的机制，而是以多种机械上不同的方式实现的。