Antibiotic efficacy is linked to bacterial cellular respiration

Bacteriostatic and bactericidal antibiotic treatments result in two fundamentally different phenotypic outcomes--the inhibition of bacterial growth or, alternatively, cell death. Most antibiotics inhibit processes that are major consumers of cellular energy output, suggesting that antibiotic treatment may have important downstream consequences on bacterial metabolism. We hypothesized that the specific metabolic effects of bacteriostatic and bactericidal antibiotics contribute to their overall efficacy. We leveraged the opposing phenotypes of bacteriostatic and bactericidal drugs in combination to investigate their activity. Growth inhibition from bacteriostatic antibiotics was associated with suppressed…

• HH
  Howard Hughes Medical Institute
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Award: DP1 OD003644
• HW
  Hansjörg Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University