Variations between single members of a bacterial population can lead to antibiotic resistance that is not gene based. The future of effective infectious disease management might depend on a better understanding of this phenomenon and the potential to manipulate both it and microbial population dynamics in general.
References
Fischbach, M.A. & Walsh, C.T. Science 325, 1089–1093 (2009).
Davies, J. & Davies, D. Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev. 74, 417–433 (2010).
Payne, D.J., Gwynn, M.N., Holmes, D.J. & Pompliano, D.L. Nat. Rev. Drug Discov. 6, 29–40 (2007).
Dhar, N. & McKinney, J.D. Curr. Opin. Microbiol. 10, 30–38 (2007).
Bigger, J.W. Lancet 244, 497–500 (1944).
Avery, S.V. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 4, 577–587 (2006).
Smits, W.K., Kuipers, O.P. & Veening, J.W. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 4, 259–271 (2006).
Lee, H.H., Molla, M.N., Cantor, C.R. & Collins, J.J. Nature 467, 82–85 (2010).
West, S.A., Griffin, A.S., Gardner, A. & Diggle, S.P. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 4, 597–607 (2006).
Stewart, G.R., Robertson, B.D. & Young, D.B. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 1, 97–105 (2003).
Gomez, J.E. & McKinney, J.D. Tuberculosis (Edinb.) 84, 29–44 (2004).
Barry, C.E. et al. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 7, 845–855 (2009).
Brehm-Stecher, B.F. & Johnson, E.A. Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev. 68, 538–559 (2004).
Schmid, A., Kortmann, H., Dittrich, P.S. & Blank, L.M. Curr. Opin. Biotechnol. 21, 12–20 (2010).
Raj, A. & van Oudenaarden, A. Annu. Rev. Biophys. 38, 255–270 (2009).
Wang, D. & Bodovitz, S. Trends Biotechnol. 28, 281–290 (2010).
Raj, A. & van Oudenaarden, A. Cell 135, 216–226 (2008).
Walsh, C. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 1, 65–70 (2003).
Balaban, N.Q., Merrin, J., Chait, R., Kowalik, L. & Leibler, S. Science 305, 1622–1625 (2004).
Spiller, D.G., Wood, C.D., Rand, D.A. & White, M.R.H. Nature 465, 736–745 (2010).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The author declares no competing financial interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Strauss, E. Grand Challenge Commentary: Exploiting single-cell variation for new antibiotics. Nat Chem Biol 6, 873–875 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.483
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.483
- Springer Nature America, Inc.
This article is cited by
-
Microbial metabolic exchange—the chemotype-to-phenotype link
Nature Chemical Biology (2012)