mGem: Antibiotic tolerance across the growth-rate continuum in chronic human infections.

Growth rate is strongly linked to antibiotic susceptibility, and chronic human infections likely span a broad continuum of growth states beyond persisters or growth arrest.

• Why it matters: Antibiotic failure can occur even when clinical isolates remain susceptible, so tolerance—not just genetic resistance—may explain persistence in chronic infections.
• What they did: The work argues tolerance should be mapped across growth-rate heterogeneity, proposing stochastic growth-rate variation within clonal populations can yield survival without dormancy.
• The result: Defining how antibiotic survival changes across the growth-rate continuum, especially at substantially slower rates, is needed to understand tolerance during human infection.