Antibiotic resistance: a physicist's view

Abstract

The problem of antibiotic resistance poses challenges across many disciplines. One such challenge is to understand the fundamental science of how antibiotics work, and how resistance to them can emerge. This is an area where physicists can make important contributions. Here, we highlight cases where this is already happening, and suggest directions for further physics involvement in antimicrobial research.

7 pages, 1 figure

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• Selective sweeps in growing microbial colonies
• Shaping the Growth Behaviour of Biofilms Initiated from Bacterial Aggregates
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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Bacterial growth: a statistical physicist's guide
• Predicting the dynamics of bacterial growth inhibition by ribosome-targeting antibiotics
• Quantitative modelling of nutrient-limited growth of bacterial colonies in microfluidic cultivation
• Convection shapes the trade-off between antibiotic efficacy and the selection for resistance in spatial gradients
• A Van-Der-Waals picture for metabolic networks from MaxEnt modeling: inherent bistability and elusive coexistence