Back

Commensal taxa in gut microbiota limit antibiotic resistance during extended oral antibiotic use

Cyphert, E. L.; Liu, C.; Chu, V. T.; Dubey, A.; Liu, M.; Zhong, Z.; Cockey, J. R.; Diaz, E. C. G.; Morales, A. L.; Nixon, J. C.; Garcia, M.; Zeng, S.; Rohatgi, S.; Wong, J.; Arjyal, R.; Mekonen, H.; Neff, N.; Lee, J.; Shea, M. K.; Fu, X.; Booth, S. L.; Leifer, C. A.; Singh, A.; Langelier, C. R.; Hernandez, C. J.

2025-08-13 microbiology
10.1101/2025.08.13.670183 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Certain bacterial infections, such as those involving prosthetics, can require antimicrobial therapy over months to years, potentially increasing the burden of antimicrobial resistance. Here we longitudinally track the antimicrobial resistome in mice during continuous antibiotic dosing over 21 months. The burden of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) initially increases, but, surprisingly, declines in later months, approaching levels observed in untreated animals. ARG burden is regulated by taxonomy and declines as ARG-harboring taxa that initially bloom are replaced by commensals. Furthermore, we find that the dynamics of antibiotic-induced ARG burden are influenced by age-related differences in microbial taxonomy and can be removed by fecal microbiota transplantation. We show that commensals may regulate the resistome by limiting the growth of ARG-harboring taxa, thereby providing antimicrobial expansion resistance.

Matching journals

The top 4 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.