Water-soluble synthetic polymers (WSPs), including polyacrylamide, polyvinyl alcohol, and polyethylene glycol, are widely used in consumer and industrial applications such as detergents, cosmetics, and textile processing. Global demand for WSPs is increasing by over 5.4% annually and is expected to reach 12.8 million metric tons within the next decade. After their use, millions of tons of WSPs dissolve and enter environmental systems each year; however, their environmental fate and potential long-term impacts remain poorly understood.

While native to ~30% of the population, S. aureus is labeled a serious health threat by the CDC due to its infectious prevalence and growing antibiotic resistance. While genetic factors have been linked with antibiotic resistance, recent antibiotics such as daptomycin directly target the bacteria’s lipid membrane, yet the impact of physiological and morphological changes to the bacterial membrane on drug resistance is critically understudied.

Exogenous fatty acids (exoFAs) have been reported to give bacteria such as E. faecalis and S. aureus an advantage over certain membrane-targeting antibiotics, like daptomycin. The impact of exoFAs on conferred tolerance has been most deeply characterized by microbiology assays along with some lipidomic analyses.