In Vitro Investigation of the Impact of Bacterial-Fungal Interaction on Carbapenem-Resistant .

Fungal-bacterial co-culturing is a potential technique for the production of secondary metabolites with antibacterial activity. Twenty-nine fungal species were screened in a co-culture with carbapenem-resistant at different temperatures. A temperature of 37 ° showed inhibition of bacterial growth. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing for was conducted to compare antibiotic resistance patterns before and after the co-culture. Genotypic comparison of the was performed using next generation sequencing (NGS). It was shown that two out of five , with sequence type ST 101 isolates, lost , , , and genes after the co-culture with fungus. The other three isolates (ST 383 and 147) were inhibited in the co-culture but did not show any changes in resistance. The total ethyl acetate extract of the fungal-bacterial co-culture was tested against using a disc diffusion method. The concentration of the crude extract was 0.97 mg/µL which resulted in total inhibition of the bacteria. Using chromatographic techniques, the purified compounds were identified as 11-octadecenoic acid, 2,4-Di-tert-butylphenol, 2,3-Butanediol and 9-octadecenamide. These were tested against using the well diffusion method at a concentration of 85 µg/µL which resulted in total inhibition of bacteria. The co-culture results indicated that bacteria under chemical stress showed variable responses and induced fungal secondary metabolites with antibacterial activities.