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Sonia Singhal, Digest: Beating pathogens at their own game, Evolution, Volume 71, Issue 3, 1 March 2017, Pages 804–805, https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.13184
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In recent years, the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens has prompted searches for new ways to control them. Although many studies have focused on discovering new antimicrobials, fewer have looked at the ecological interactions that control pathogenic bacteria. Pathogenic bacteria are embedded in multispecies microbial communities where they interact with other bacterial species and their own parasitic enemies, bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria; also called phages). Interactions with these other microbes may hinder, benefit, or have no effect on the pathogen. In particular, species that interact antagonistically with the pathogen could be used to control its spread. Competing bacterial species, for example, may reduce the pathogen's growth by impeding access to space and nutrients, or by producing antimicrobial metabolites or other toxins that specifically target and harm the pathogen. Similarly, bacterial pathogens could be infected and killed by phages (Wang et al. 2017).
Bacterial and phage antagonists can effectively combat pathogenic bacteria, particularly antibiotic-resistant ones, in laboratory settings (e.g., Torres-Barceló et al. 2014, Arias-Sánchez and Hall 2016, Chan et al. 2016). However, the evolution of resistance remains a concern. Just as pathogenic bacteria readily evolve resistance to antibiotics, they may also evolve strategies to evade biological antagonists. Bacteria can evolve resistance to phages, for example, through strategies such as mutating or downregulating membrane ports the phages use for infection (Chan et al. 2016).
