Ciprofloxacin tolerance and resistance in E. coli

Antibiotic screens typically rely on growth inhibition to characterize compound bioactivity – an approach that is unable to assess the bactericidal activity of antibiotics against bacteria in drug-tolerant states. To address this limitation, we developed a multiplexed assay that utilizes metabolism-sensitive staining to report on killing of antibiotic-tolerant bacteria. This method can be used with diverse bacterial species and applied to genome-scale investigations to identify novel therapeutic targets against tolerant pathogens.