A nutrient bottleneck controls antibiotic efficacy in structured bacterial populations

Antibiotic resistance is a growing global health threat. Although antibiotic activity is well studied in homogeneous liquid cultures, many infections are caused by spatially structured multicellular populations where consumption of scarce nutrients establishes strong spatial variations in their abundance. These nutrient variations have long been hypothesized to help bacterial populations tolerate antibiotics, since liquid culture studies link antibiotic tolerance to metabolic activity, and thus, local nutrient availability. Here, we test this hypothesis by visualizing cell death in structured Escherichia coli populations exposed to select nutrients and antibiotics. We find that nutrient availability acts as a bottleneck to antibiotic killing, causing death to propagate through the population as a traveling front. By integrating our measurements with biophysical theory and simulations, we establish quantitative principles that explain how collective nutrient consumption can limit the progression of this "death front," protecting a population from a nominally deadly antibiotic dose. While increasing nutrient supply can overcome this bottleneck, in some cases, excess nutrient unexpectedly promotes the regrowth of resistant cells. Altogether, this work provides a key step toward predicting and controlling antibiotic treatment of spatially structured bacterial populations, yielding biophysical insights into collective behavior and guiding strategies for effective antibiotic stewardship.