bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2019.12.16.878389; this version posted December 17, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 1 Transcriptome-based design of antisense inhibitors re-sensitizes CRE E. coli to 2 carbapenems 3 Thomas R. Aunins1,#, Keesha E. Erickson1,#, and Anushree Chatterjee1,2,3* 4 #These authors contributed equally 5 *Corresponding author: Email:
[email protected]. Phone: (303) 735-6586, Fax: (303) 492- 6 8424 7 8 1Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder 9 Colorado, USA 10 2Biomedical Engineering Program, University of Colorado Boulder, USA. 11 3Antimicrobial Regeneration Consortium, Boulder, USA. 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2019.12.16.878389; this version posted December 17, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 12 Abstract 13 Carbapenems are a powerful class of antibiotics, often used as a last-resort treatment to eradicate 14 multidrug-resistant infections. In recent years, however, the incidence of carbapenem-resistant 15 Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) has risen substantially, and the study of bacterial resistance 16 mechanisms has become increasingly important for antibiotic development. Although much 17 research has focused on genomic contributors to carbapenem resistance, relatively few studies 18 have examined CRE pathogens through changes in gene expression. In this research, we used 19 transcriptomics to study a CRE Escherichia coli clinical isolate that is sensitive to meropenem but 20 resistant to ertapenem, to both explore carbapenem resistance and identify novel gene 21 knockdown targets for carbapenem re-sensitization.