Commensal Bacteria: Not Just Innocent Bystanders
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Updated: Jan 30, 2026

Conjunctival Commensal Isolation and Identification in Mice
Published on: May 1, 2021
1Department of Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, USA michael-apicella@uiowa.edu.
Abstract:
Neisseria gonorrhoeae is quickly becoming untreatable due to its acquisition of resistance to multiple antimicrobials. It is vital that we begin to understand the mechanisms by which this is occurring. The paper by C. E. Rouquette-Loughlin, J. L. Reimche, J. T. Balthazar, V. Dhulipala, et al. (mBio 9:e02281-18, https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.02281-18) has shown that horizontal transfer of DNA from a nasopharyngeal commensal, Neisseria polysaccharea, has resulted in multiple sequence changes in the mtr locus that affect both regulatory and structural regions of the MtrCDE pump, resulting in low-level azithromycin resistance. Studies such as this are increasingly important in our understanding of the movement of resistance between species and for devising strategies to overcome such events.
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