NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Testing bacterial cultures for antibacterial susceptibility takes days and the growing number of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections is thought to be partly due to inappropriate antibiotic use that happens in the meantime.

To combat this problem, researchers led by Rustem Ismagilov at the California Institute of Technology have now demonstrated a method of antibacterial susceptibility testing that takes less than 30 minutes and can be performed directly from patient samples with no need for bacterial culture.