ArticlePLoS biology2016
Collective Resistance in Microbial Communities by Intracellular Antibiotic Deactivation.
Article in PLoS biology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 94 papers.
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Who cites it
94 citing papers in PubMed, 167 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Slow spatial migration can help eradicate cooperative antimicrobial resistance in time-varying environments.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- A nutrient bottleneck controls antibiotic efficacy in structured bacterial populations.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Microbial interactions in facilitating antibiotic activity and resistance evolution.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Acidifying bacteria inhibit pathogenic bacteria more strongly with increasing glucose.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Cooperative antibiotic resistance in bacteria: beyond biofilms.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
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- Antibiotics and priority effects on colonizing resistant Escherichia coli strain assemblages in a community setting.PloS one · 2026Article
- Contributions of β-lactamase substrate specificity and outer membrane permeability to the antibiotic sheltering of β-lactam-susceptible bacteria.RSC chemical biology · 2025Article
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- Polymicrobial Biofilms: Interkingdom Interactions, Resistance and Therapeutic Strategies.Microbial biotechnology · 2025Review
- Cooperative resistance varies among β-lactamases in E. coli, with some enabling cross-protection and sustained extracellular activity.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Exploiting social traits for clinical applications in bacteria and viruses.npj antimicrobials and resistance · 2025Review
- Genome Analysis of 6222 Bacterial Isolates from Livestock and Food Environments in Spain to Decipher the Antibiotic Resistome.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Article
34 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The structure and composition of bacterial communities can compromise antibiotic efficacy. For example, the secretion of β-lactamase by individual bacteria provides passive resistance for all residents within a polymicrobial environment. Here, we uncover that collective resistance can also develop via intracellular antibiotic deactivation. Real-time luminescence measurements and single-cell analysis demonstrate that the opportunistic human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae grows in medium supplemented with chloramphenicol (Cm) when resistant bacteria expressing Cm acetyltransferase (CAT) are present. We show that CAT processes Cm intracellularly but not extracellularly. In a mouse pneumonia model, more susceptible pneumococci survive Cm treatment when coinfected with a CAT-expressing strain. Mathematical modeling predicts that stable coexistence is only possible when antibiotic resistance comes at a fitness cost. Strikingly, CAT-expressing pneumococci in mouse lungs were outcompeted by susceptible cells even during Cm treatment. Our results highlight the importance of the microbial context during infectious disease as a potential complicating factor to antibiotic therapy.
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Registered trials
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