ArticlePLoS biology2020
Resident microbial communities inhibit growth and antibiotic-resistance evolution of Escherichia coli in human gut microbiome samples.
Article in PLoS biology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Microbial interactions as key players shaping the emergence and spread ofMicrobiology (Reading, England) · 2026Review
- Modelling the role of the microbiome in antimicrobial resistance across scales.Nature microbiology · 2026Review
- Interspecies interaction controlsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Driving Antibiotic Resistance Evolution ofMicroorganisms · 2026Article
- Genetic traits of IncK2 plasmids and theMicrobial genomics · 2026Article
- Broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment reshapes the gut microbiome, resistome, and colonization potential of opportunistic pathogens: a metagenomics study.Gut pathogens · 2026Article
- Acidifying bacteria inhibit pathogenic bacteria more strongly with increasing glucose.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Resistance variation and bacterial interactions shape adaptation of a genetically diverse pathogen population to antibiotic therapy.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Multi-layered ecological interactions determine growth of clinical antibiotic-resistant strains within human microbiomes.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Evidence of ESBL plasmid transfer and selective persistence of multiple host-associatedApplied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Microbiome and resistome characterization of patients colonized with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales by long-read metagenomic next-generation sequencing of rectal swabs.JAC-antimicrobial resistance · 2025Article
- Microbial Primer: Challenges and opportunities in the treatment of chronic polymicrobial infections ‒ an eco-evolutionary perspective.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2025Review
- Metagenomics reveals an increased proportion of anJournal of Zhejiang University. Science. B · 2025Article
- The role of bacterial metabolism in human gut colonization.International microbiology : the official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology · 2025Review
- Interspecies interaction alters the trajectory of antibiotic resistance evolution by amplifying negative fitness epistasis.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Expanding the β-Lactamase Family in the Human Microbiome.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2024Article
- Ecological and evolutionary mechanisms driving within-patient emergence of antimicrobial resistance.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2024Review
- Antibiotic resistance alters the ability ofEvolution letters · 2024Article
- Emergent antibiotic persistence in a spatially structured synthetic microbial mutualism.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- Impact of dilution on stochastically driven methanogenic microbial communities of hypersaline anoxic sediments.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Countering the rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogens requires improved understanding of how resistance emerges and spreads in individual species, which are often embedded in complex microbial communities such as the human gut microbiome. Interactions with other microorganisms in such communities might suppress growth and resistance evolution of individual species (e.g., via resource competition) but could also potentially accelerate resistance evolution via horizontal transfer of resistance genes. It remains unclear how these different effects balance out, partly because it is difficult to observe them directly. Here, we used a gut microcosm approach to quantify the effect of three human gut microbiome communities on growth and resistance evolution of a focal strain of Escherichia coli. We found the resident microbial communities not only suppressed growth and colonisation by focal E. coli but also prevented it from evolving antibiotic resistance upon exposure to a beta-lactam antibiotic. With samples from all three human donors, our focal E. coli strain only evolved antibiotic resistance in the absence of the resident microbial community, even though we found resistance genes, including a highly effective resistance plasmid, in resident microbial communities. We identified physical constraints on plasmid transfer that can explain why our focal strain failed to acquire some of these beneficial resistance genes, and we found some chromosomal resistance mutations were only beneficial in the absence of the resident microbiota. This suggests, depending on in situ gene transfer dynamics, interactions with resident microbiota can inhibit antibiotic-resistance evolution of individual species.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.