Optical Tuning of Antibacterial Activity of Photoresponsive Antibiotics

Owing to the accumulation of high concentrations of antibiotics in the environment, antibiotic resistance has become a serious public health threat to modern society. Herein, developing antibiotic agents that could be externally inactivated for preventing bacterium from exposing to antibiotics continuously is highly desirable. We design and synthesize a photoresponsive, broad-spectrum antibiotic (azobenzene-norfloxacin), the antibacterial activity of azobenzene-norfloxacin can be "turned off" with light irradiation due to the conformation change of azobenzene, followed by minimizing the buildup of active antibiotics in the environment. This agent capable of inactivation exhibits potential to avoid the occurrence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains.