Research from the Hoskisson Lab at the University of Strathclyde reveals how multidrug-resistant E. coli use metabolic genes on resistance plasmids to outcompete commensal gut bacteria, even without antibiotic pressure.

Antimicrobial resistance poses a critical global health threat, demanding new strategies beyond drug discovery. Hoskisson Lab's 3,000-generation evolution experiment with Streptomyces bacteria revealed that a single gene mutation drives faster growth and metabolic specialisation under industrial conditions - a finding that could accelerate the engineering of optimised antibiotic-producing strains and strengthen the pipeline against AMR.