ABSTRACT
The mechanisms by which cosmetic preservatives exert their antimicrobial effects and the strategies adopted by bacteria to avert those effects are topics of significant importance to maintaining biological control in the various microbial habitats available within the cosmetic industry. Membrane-active biocides, as their name implies, attack the integrity or function of the microbial cell membranes. The successful understanding of biocide mechanisms of action requires the ability to live with compromise and an appreciation of multiple perspectives. Microbes have limited but effective repertoires of resistance strategies developed over the last billion years or so. The relatively non-specific nature of preservative–target interactions makes the use of target site alteration as a resistance strategy very difficult. The mechanisms by which cosmetic preservatives inhibit and kill bacteria are in many respects very different from those associated with antibiotics.
