Carmen Gu Liu, PhD

ALT Schematic overview of the workflow in the present study. First, the intrasample MIC diversity was determined by testing the MIC for each isolate separately. If MIC diversity (shown in the left picture as growth inhibition at different antibiotic concentrations) was observed in single isolate testing, the MIC was determined for combinations of an increasing number of pooled isolates to assess the influence of pooling isolates systematically. For each number of pooled isolates (ranging from 2 to 9 isolates), the MIC was determined for 12 combinations of randomly selected isolates, and the number of pooled isolates was further increased until the diversity ratio became zero (shown in the right picture as growth inhibition for all 12 combinations at the same antibiotic concentration). For abbreviations and definitions, see Table 1.