Engineered Mycobacteriophage TM4::GeNL Rapidly Determines Bedaquiline, Pretomanid, Linezolid, Rifampicin, and Clofazimine Sensitivity in Mycobacterium tuberculosis Clinical Isolates.

Background: Drug-resistant tuberculosis is a growing public health threat, and early characterization of the resistance phenotype is essential for guiding treatment and mitigating the high mortality associated with the disease. However, the slow growth rate of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, necessitates several weeks for conventional culture-dependent drug susceptibility testing (DST). In addition, there are no widely available molecular diagnostic assays for evaluating resistance to newer tuberculosis drugs or drugs with complex resistance mechanisms.

The Prophage and Plasmid Mobilome as a Likely Driver of Mycobacterium abscessus Diversity.

is an emerging pathogen that is often refractory to antibiotic control. Treatment is further complicated by considerable variation among clinical isolates in both their genetic constitution and their clinical manifestations. Here, we show that the prophage and plasmid mobilome is a likely contributor to this variation.

Mycobacterium abscessus Strain Morphotype Determines Phage Susceptibility, the Repertoire of Therapeutically Useful Phages, and Phage Resistance.

is an opportunistic pathogen whose treatment is confounded by widespread multidrug resistance. The therapeutic use of bacteriophages against infections offers a potential alternative approach, although the spectrum of phage susceptibilities among isolates is not known. We determined the phage infection profiles of 82 recent clinical isolates and find that colony morphotype-rough or smooth-is a key indicator of phage susceptibility.