Making sense of drug-efflux transporters in the physiological environment

Bacterial drug-efflux transporters act synergistically with diffusion barriers of cellular membranes and other resistance mechanisms to protect cells from antibiotics and toxic metabolites. Their critical roles in clinical antibiotic and multidrug resistance are well established. In addition, a large body of evidence has been accumulated in support of their important contributions to bacterial growth and proliferation during infections. However, how these diverse functions of drug transporters are integrated at the level of bacterial cell physiology remains unclear. This opinion briefly summarizes the current understanding of substrate specificities and physiological roles of drug-efflux pumps from Resistance-Nodulation-Division (RND) superfamily of proteins in two ESKAPE pathogens Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii. Based on the analysis of phenotypic and transcriptomic studies in vitro and in vivo, we propose that RND pumps of Gram-negative bacteria fall into three categories: constitutively expressed, regulated, and silent. These three categories of efflux pumps participate in different physiological programs, which are not involved in the central metabolism and bacterial growth.