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Bacteria

Much like viral pathogens, infection by certain bacterial pathogens can be prevented via vaccines. Vaccines against bacterial pathogens include the anthrax vaccine and pneumococcal vaccine. Many other bacterial pathogens lack vaccines as a preventive measure, but infection by these bacteria can often be treated or prevented with antibiotics. Common antibiotics include amoxicillin, ciprofloxacin, and doxycycline. Each antibiotic has different bacteria that it is effective against and has different mechanisms to kill that bacteria. For example, doxycycline inhibits the synthesis of new proteins in both gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria, which makes it a broad-spectrum antibiotic capable of killing most bacterial species.

Due to misuse of antibiotics, such as prematurely ended prescriptions exposing bacteria to evolutionary pressure under sublethal doses, some bacterial pathogens have developed antibiotic resistance. For example, a genetically distinct strain of Staphylococcus aureus called MRSA is resistant to the commonly prescribed beta-lactam antibiotics. A 2013 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that in the United States, at least 2 million people get an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection annually, with at least 23,000 of those patients dying from the infection.

Due to their indispensability in combating bacteria, new antibiotics are required for medical care. One target for new antimicrobial medications involves inhibiting DNA methyltransferases, as these proteins control the levels of expression for other genes, such as those encoding virulence factors.