‘Sleeper cells’, which can survive doses of antibiotics and lie resting in a dormant state, may hold a key to understanding antibiotic resistance, research has found.
The research, published in the journal BMC Biology, lays the foundation for understanding the special properties of bacteria that can survive being treated with antibiotics, so that new ways of targeting them can be developed.
Antibiotic resistance is one of the most pressing public health challenges and threatens the ability to effectively fight infectious diseases including pneumonia and tuberculosis.
Paper: ‘Investigating the physiology of viable but non-culturable bacteria by microfluidics and time-lapse microscopy‘ by R.A. Bamford, A. Smith, J. Metz, G. Glover, R.W. Titball and S. Pagliara in BMC Biology.