Paper 11 October 2023

Competitive interactions facilitate resistance development against antimicrobials

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the most studied bacterial properties due to its enormous clinical and industrial relevance; however, most research focuses on resistance development of a single species in isolation. Luka Svet, Ilse Parijs, Simon Isphording, and Bram Lories showed in a paper published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology that resistance evolution of brewery isolates can differ greatly between single- and mixed-species conditions. Specifically, they observed that the development of antimicrobial resistance in certain species can be significantly enhanced in co-culture as compared to the single-species conditions. Overall, the study emphasizes the need of considering the within bacterial interactions in microbial communities when evaluating antimicrobial treatments and resistance evolution.