Non-canonical antibiotic interactions

Teamwork is very important in todays world, and not just at work. Anyone who has worked in teams or groups knows that there are both good teams and bad teams, depending on how the participants interact. In addition, there are teams whose cooperation is fickle, that is, they sometimes work well. In this research project, we as biologists are investigating how well teams work that consist not of people, but of two antibiotics. Antibiotics are chemicals made by microorganisms to inhibit the growth and survival of other microorganisms and bacteria. For about 100 years, antibiotics have been used in medicine, wherever bacteria are a problem. But unfortunately, many important bacteria have changed during that time and formed a problematic defense against antibiotics called resistance. Where individual antibiotics no longer work against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, teams of antibiotics can. In this research, Dr. Roderich Römhild is investigating how exactly antibiotics work together, i.e., what their teamwork looks like. For this purpose, Dr. Römhild has developed a new measurement method that provides better insight than before: the CombiANT measurement method. In preliminary results, Dr. Römhild has now found that, similar to human teams, in some cases antibiotic cooperation is variable. A fixed team of two antibiotics does not necessarily always work well or always work poorly, but it depends on how the partners get involved. Such complicated team dynamics were previously unknown in antibiotics. Dr. Römhild will now investigate how widespread these novel antibiotic inte ractions are. To do this, he will examine all possible pairwise team compositions of 16 antibiotics, for a total of 120 pairs. The new data is important for avoiding mistakes in the use of antibiotics in medicine. In medicine, only antibiotics should be combined that are always good partners. Another goal of this research is to find out why some antibiotics have a changing interaction. To do this, Dr. Römhild will look closely at what the bacteria do during treatment, comparing moments of good interaction with moments of bad interaction. This work will expand our knowledge of how antibiotics interact. With the new knowledge, the use of antibiotics can be improved so that treatments are more effective and less resistance develops.