This is Scientific American's 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher in Tagyatta.

It's one of the underwater world's classic partnerships, clownfish and...

Neninny. ships, clownfish and... Nemem, Nemo, nemo hides in the anemone, which helps keep predatory fish at bay.

But at the same time, there are other fish species that will actually kind of a nibble on the sea and enemies and the clownfish will actually go out and kind of scare them away.

Jeff Gore, a biophysicist at MIT.

So in this case, there's actually a cross-protection mutualism

between these two species, which they kind of help

to avoid predation.

This kind of cross-protection is usually seen between two animals,

but Gore studies the same sort of mutualism in microbes.

He and his team demonstrated the first experimental example of that cross-protective relationship

in drug-resistant microbes using two strains of antibiotic resistant E. coli bacteria,

one resistant to Amposillin, the other to chlorum phenylylin.

The researchers grew both bacteria together in a test tube,

in the presence of both antibiotics.

And rather than succumbing to the drugs,

each bacterial strain deactivated one of the two antibiotics,

thus protecting the other strain.

That activity led to a stable coexistence over time, which Gore says could in theory give the bugs an opportunity to swap

resistance genes through what's called horizontal gene transfer.

One bacterium donates genetic material to another. Any such transfer could make either or both

...