ABSTRACT

Antibiotics — or antibiotic-like substances — are produced by many members of the skin's microflora. However, it is essential to remember that, in any natural situation, interactions take place between a variety of organisms competing for nutrient and specific ecological niches as well as producing antibiotics and probiotics. Noble and Willie found that antibiotic-producing cocci would suppress S. aureus in a skin surface colonization model in mice, but that in a subcutaneous infection model they were less successful. Interference between organisms at the skin surface as a result of antibiotic production may therefore have created the whole gamut of problems encapsulated in the phrase "multiresistant staphylococci". With the advent of penicillinase it became clear that other antibiotics, previously masked by penicillin, were also produced by some strains. In principle, there seems no reason why crude DNA produced by dermatophyte-penicillin-induced lysis of lesionai bacteria should not bring about gene transfer in vivo.