In this section
@article{King:2025:10.1038/s41467-025-61731-z,
author = {King, OG and Yip, AYG and Horrocks, V and Miguéns, Blanco J and Marchesi, JR and Mullish, BH and Clarke, TB and McDonald, JAK},
doi = {10.1038/s41467-025-61731-z},
journal = {Nature Communications},
title = {Vancomycin-resistant enterococci utilise antibiotic-enriched nutrients for intestinal colonisation},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-61731-z},
volume = {16},
year = {2025}
}
TY - JOUR
AB - <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Antibiotic treatment significantly disrupts the gut microbiome and promotes vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) intestinal colonisation. These disruptions cause the intestine to act as a reservoir for VRE that seed difficult-to-treat infections. Here we show that antibiotics that promote VRE intestinal colonisation increase the concentration of a wide range of nutrients and decrease the concentration of a wide range of microbial metabolites. We show significant but incomplete suppression of VRE growth by individual short chain fatty acids that were decreased in antibiotic-treated faecal microbiomes. However, mixtures of short chain fatty acids provide complete or near complete suppression of VRE growth. We show that VRE use most nutrients increased in antibiotic-treated faecal microbiomes as carbon or nitrogen sources to support their growth, where <jats:italic>Enterococcus faecium</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>Enterococcus faecalis</jats:italic> have some common and some distinct preferences for the use of these specific nutrients. Finally, we show that <jats:italic>E. faecium</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>E. faecalis</jats:italic> occupy overlapping but distinct nutrient-defined intestinal niches that promote high growth when cultured with each other and when cultured with carbapenem-resistant <jats:italic>Enterobacteriaceae</jats:italic>. Our results demonstrate that VRE occupy distinct intestinal niches in the antibiotic-treated intestine, defined by their abilities to utilise specific enriched nutrients and their abilities to grow with reduced concentrations of inhibitory microbial metabolites.</jats:p>
AU - King,OG
AU - Yip,AYG
AU - Horrocks,V
AU - Miguéns,Blanco J
AU - Marchesi,JR
AU - Mullish,BH
AU - Clarke,TB
AU - McDonald,JAK
DO - 10.1038/s41467-025-61731-z
PY - 2025///
TI - Vancomycin-resistant enterococci utilise antibiotic-enriched nutrients for intestinal colonisation
T2 - Nature Communications
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-61731-z
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-61731-z
VL - 16
ER -
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