Identifying targets for antibiotic development using omics technologies

The lack of new compounds in the antibiotic development pipeline together with the increasing incidence of infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria on a global scale represents an alarming public health problem. Advances in genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic technologies permit the characterization of bacterial physiology at an unprecedented scale, and thus can facilitate the identification of bacterial factors that could serve as targets for the development of new antibiotics. Recent studies employing these technologies have permitted the elucidation of key components in multiple bacterial processes such as bacterial survival, persistence in the host and infection. The continued use of these approaches and the incorporation of emerging omics technologies hold great potential in elucidating high value targets for antibiotic development.