# Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Collective Antibiotic Resistance in Microbial Communities

> **NIH NIH R35** · UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR · 2021 · $312,028

## Abstract

Project Summary
Antibiotic resistance is among the most serious threats to global public health in the 21st century. Bacteria
have a remarkable ability to evolve resistance to antibiotics, regardless of their class or mechanism of action.
Unfortunately, the pace of drug discovery lags far behind the rapid pace of emerging resistance. As a result,
there is an urgent need to understand how bacteria respond to antibiotics on multiple length scales, ranging
from the molecular level to the scale of entire microbial communities, in hopes of prolonging the efficacy
of current drugs or uncovering new potential therapies. In addition, it is critical to understand how antibiotic
resistance determinants evolve and spread in microbial populations. A number of recent studies suggest
that the response of cellular communities to antibiotics is often a collective phenomenon, indicating that a
detailed characterization of molecular mechanisms—while essential—may not be sufficient to predict
large-scale microbial behavior and evolution. In this proposal, we outline an integrated research program
aimed at understanding how collective interactions in bacterial communities impact the dynamics and
evolution of antibiotic resistance across multiple length scales, ranging from the large-scale behavior of
spatially extended communities to the single-cell architecture of biofilms. If successful, our work will
uncover new quantitative principles of microbial ecology, provide experimental model systems for testing
predictions of evolutionary theory, and clarify the role of community dynamics in shaping the bacterial
response to antibiotics. These results will enrich our understanding of how cellular cooperation is
disseminated in spatially complex environments, with potential implications for basic evolutionary biology
as well as other health-related fields, such as cancer biology, where multi-cellular coordination may
underlie disease. In the long term, the findings may even open the door to innovative therapies aimed at
destabilizing community structure in bacterial infections.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10222714
- **Project number:** 5R35GM124875-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
- **Principal Investigator:** Kevin Wood
- **Activity code:** R35 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $312,028
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-09-01 → 2022-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10222714

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10222714, Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Collective Antibiotic Resistance in Microbial Communities (5R35GM124875-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10222714. Licensed CC0.

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