A multiplexable assay for screening antibiotic lethality against drug-tolerant bacteria

Abstract

Antibiotic screens typically rely on growth inhibition to characterize compound bioactivity—an approach that cannot be used to assess the bactericidal activity of antibiotics against bacteria in drug-tolerant states. To address this limitation, we developed a multiplexed assay that uses metabolism-sensitive staining to report on the killing of antibiotic-tolerant bacteria. This method can be used with diverse bacterial species and applied to genome-scale investigations to identify therapeutic targets against tolerant pathogens.