RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Effect of common and experimental anti-tuberculosis treatments on Mycobacterium tuberculosis growing as biofilms JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 082156 DO 10.1101/082156 A1 J.P. Dalton A1 B. Uy A1 N. Phummarin A1 B. R. Copp A1 W.A. Denny A1 S. Swift A1 S. Wiles YR 2016 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/20/082156.abstract AB Much is known regarding the antibiotic susceptibility of planktonic cultures of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for the lung disease tuberculosis (TB). As planktonically-grown M. tuberculosis are unlikely to be entirely representative of the bacterium during infection, we set out to determine how effective a range of anti-mycobacterial treatments were against M. tuberculosis growing as a biofilm, a bacterial phenotype known to be more resistant to antibiotic treatment. Light levels from bioluminescently-labelled M. tuberculosis H37Rv (strain BSG001) were used as a surrogate for bacterial viability, and were monitored before and after 1 week of treatment. After treatment, biofilms were disrupted, washed and inoculated into fresh broth and plated onto solid media to rescue any surviving bacteria. We found that in this phenotypic state M. tuberculosis was resistant to the majority of the compounds tested. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) increased by 20-fold to greater than 1000-fold, underlying the potential of this phenotype to cause significant problems during treatment.