PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Maria van Rossem
AU  - Sandra Wilks
AU  - Malgosia Kaczmarek
AU  - Patrick R. Secor
AU  - Giampaolo D’Alessandro
TI  - Modelling of filamentous phage-induced antibiotic tolerance of <em>P.aeruginosa</em>
AID  - 10.1101/2021.12.03.471163
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.12.03.471163
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/12/03/2021.12.03.471163.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/12/03/2021.12.03.471163.full
AB  - Filamentous molecules tend to spontaneously assemble into liquid crystalline droplets with a tactoid morphology in the environments with the high concentration on non-adsorbing molecules. Tactoids of filamentous Pf bacteriophage, such as those produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, have been linked with increased antibiotic tolerance. We modelled this system and show that tactoids, composed of filamentous Pf virions, can lead to antibiotic tolerance by acting as an adsorptive diffusion barrier. The continuum model, reminiscent of descriptions of reactive diffusion in porous media, has been solved numerically and good agreement was found with the analytical results, obtained using a homogenisation approach. We find that the formation of tactoids significantly increases antibiotic diffusion times leading to stronger antibiotic resistance.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.