F1000Prime - Tolerance to the antimicrobial peptide colistin in Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms is linked to metabolically active cells (Mol.Microbiol. Vol. 68(1)).

This study demonstrates that difficulties in treating infections caused by biofilm-forming bacteria may be due to differential sensitivities of metabolically distinct subpopulations of bacterial cells in the biofilm. The authors show that combination therapy, with antibiotics targeting each distinct subpopulation, may be a successful treatment strategy for infections of biofilm-forming bacteria [...].

Synergistic effects of antibiotics are well known, and this paper presents one interesting explanation: distinct sub-populations of cells in a biofilm that are susceptible to different classes of drugs [...].

This paper highlights the importance of studying distinct and well-defined sub-populations of cells in a physiologically relevant context.