Abstract
Although development of antimicrobial resistance by bacteria is a natural phenomenon, the antibiotic resistance crisis is a reality that leads us in a gap of antimicrobial alternatives on therapeutics. Considering this cruel reality and committed to contribute to look for new antibacterial agents, this manuscript presents a review of easy laboratory methods that evaluate the mode of action of compounds, since it is a basic requirement for the discovery and development of new drugs. The literature was screened by searching the keywords “mode of action”, “antibiotic”, “antimicrobial activity”, “inhibition mode”, “method” and “bacteria” in Pubmed, Scopus, Science Direct and BVS in a period of time from 2000 to 2019. This review demonstrates the wide variety of methods that can be employed in research on mechanisms of action of antibacterial substances. Therefore, we compiled different protocols (presented in the supplementary material), available in the literature, with the purpose of facilitating the start of experiments.
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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its Supplementary information files].
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ABP: data extraction, data analysis, wrote the manuscript. RLF: consulted on articles evaluation, proofread the manuscript. ACMA: idea, data analysis, wrote the manuscript, contributed substantially to discussion.
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Polo, A.B., Fabri, R.L. & Apolônio, A.C.M. Searching for mechanisms of action of antimicrobials. Arch Microbiol 202, 2347–2354 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-020-01959-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-020-01959-z