Antimicrobial Resistance collection – open for submissions

22 July 2021

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In the run up to its anniversary year in 2022, Microbiology is launching a series of themed collections which celebrate the breadth of microbiology and showcase why microbiology matters. This month we are pleased to launch the Antimicrobial Resistance collection, guest-edited by Professor Willem van Schaik and Dr Robert Moran (University of Birmingham).

Antimicrobial drugs underpin much of modern medicine. Bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses that exhibit resistance to antimicrobials threaten the efficacy of therapeutics and impose significant global healthcare and economic burdens. In the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the emergence of pan-drug resistant bacterial and fungal infections in hospitals is a stark reminder of the looming antimicrobial resistance crisis.

That bacteria would develop resistance to antibiotics through mutation was predicted as early as the discovery of penicillin, but the observation of resistance gene transfer between strains in the 1950s heralded the beginning of a period of rapid discovery of resistance mechanisms. Research into the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance proceeded alongside the development of the field of molecular biology and the decades since have seen tremendous advances in our understanding. Still, there is much to learn about where, when and how multi-drug resistance evolves, which organisms are involved and how chains of transmission might be broken before clinicians are faced with intractable infections. Today, multidisciplinary research seeks to answer these questions and the latest advances in sequencing technologies and analysis capacities promise insights into the dynamics of resistance from single cells to complex microbial communities.

This Antimicrobial Resistance special collection aims to highlight research on the emergence, accumulation and spread of antimicrobial resistance, with a particular focus on opportunistic pathogens and the mobile genetic elements therein.

Find the articles already in the Antimicrobial Resistance collection. Authors wishing to submit to the collection should do so via the online submission system and note in the cover letter that their submission is intended for the Antimicrobial Resistance collection. If you have any questions, please contact [email protected].

The Microbiology Society is a not-for-profit publisher and we support and invest in the microbiology community. All journals income is invested back into the Society through providing grants, facilitating policy activities, funding conferences and other activities.


Image: Robert Moran.