Antibiotic resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis alters tolerance to cell wall-targeting inhibitors

A limited ability to eliminate drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a major contributor to the morbidity of TB. Complicating this problem, little is known about how drug resistance-conferring mutations alter the ability of M. tuberculosis to tolerate antibiotic killing. Here, we investigated if drug-resistant strains of M. tuberculosis have an altered ability to tolerate killing by cell wall-targeting inhibitors.

Bacterial killing and MIC assays were used to test for antibiotic tolerance and synergy against a panel of drug-resistant M. tuberculosis strains.

Our results demonstrate that vancomycin and thioacetazone exhibit increased killing of diverse drug-resistant strains. Mutations in mmaA4 and mmpL3 increased vancomycin killing, which was consistent with vancomycin synergizing with thioacetazone and MmpL3-targeting inhibitors. In contrast, mutations in the mce1 operon conferred tolerance to vancomycin.

Overall, this work demonstrates how drug-resistant strains experience perturbations in cell-wall production that alters their tolerance to killing by cell wall-targeting inhibitors.