Patterns of cross-resistance and collateral sensitivity between clinical antibiotics and natural antimicrobials

Abigail Colclough, Jukka Corander, Samuel K. Sheppard, Sion C. Bayliss, Michiel Vos

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Bacteria interact with a multitude of other organisms, many of which produce antimicrobials. Selection for resistance to these antimicrobials has the potential to result in resistance to clinical antibiotics when active compounds target the same bacterial pathways. The possibility of such cross-resistance between natural antimicrobials and antibiotics has to our knowledge received very little attention. The antimicrobial activity of extracts from seaweeds, known to be prolific producers of antimicrobials, is here tested against Staphylococcus aureus isolates with varied clinical antibiotic resistance profiles. An overall effect consistent with cross-resistance is demonstrated, with multidrug-resistant S. aureus strains being on average more resistant to seaweed extracts. This pattern could potentially indicate that evolution of resistance to antimicrobials in the natural environment could lead to resistance against clinical antibiotics. However, patterns of antimicrobial activity of individual seaweed extracts vary considerably and include collateral sensitivity, where increased resistance to a particular antibiotic is associated with decreased resistance to a particular seaweed extract. Our correlation-based methods allow the identification of antimicrobial extracts bearing most promise for downstream active compound identification and pharmacological testing.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)878-887
Number of pages10
JournalEvolutionary Applications
Volume12
Issue number5
Early online date6 Jan 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2019

Funding

Microbiology Department of the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro for kindly providing bacterial isolates; Ruth Airs, Angus Buckling, Elze Hesse, Chris Lowe, Alan McNally and Mathias Middelboe for commenting on an earlier version of this manuscript; and David Fenwick Sr. for help with seaweed identification. AC and MV de‐ signed experiments, AC performed experiments, AC, JC, AM, SH, SB and MV analysed data, MV wrote the paper with input from AC, JC, AM, SH and SB. MV was funded by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant NE/L013177/1. SS was supported by Medical Research Council (MRC) Cloud Infrastructure for Microbial Bioinformatics (grant number: MR/L015080/1).  J.C. was partially funded by the COIN Centre of Excellence, Academy of Finland.

Keywords

  • antibiotic resistance
  • Antimicrobials
  • collateral sensitivity
  • cross-resistance
  • seaweeds
  • Staphylococcus aureus

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
  • Genetics
  • General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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