24Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), a cofactor for hundreds of metabolic reactions in all 25 cell types, plays an essential role in diverse cellular processes including metabolism, DNA 26 repair, and aging 1 . NAD metabolism is critical to maintain cellular homeostasis in response to 27 the environment, and disruption of this homeostasis is associated with decreased cellular NAD 28 levels in aging 2 . Conversely, elevated NAD synthesis is required to sustain the increased 29 metabolic rate of cancer cells 3,4 . Consequently, therapeutic strategies aimed to both upregulate 30 NAD (i.e. NAD-boosting nutriceuticals) or downregulate NAD (inhibitors of key NAD synthesis 31 enzymes) are being actively investigated 5-10 . However, how this essential metabolic pathway is 32 impacted by the environment remains unclear. Here, we report an unexpected trans-kingdom 33 cooperation between bacteria and mammalian cells wherein bacteria contribute to host NAD 34 biosynthesis. Bacteria confer cancer cells with the resistance to inhibitors of NAMPT, the rate 35 limiting enzyme in the main vertebrate NAD salvage pathway. Mechanistically, a microbial 36 nicotinamidase (PncA) that converts nicotinamide to nicotinic acid, a key precursor in the 37 alternative deamidated NAD salvage pathway, is necessary and sufficient for this protective 38 effect. This bacteria-enabled resistance mechanism that allows the mammalian host to bypass 39 the drug-induced metabolic block represents a novel paradigm in drug resistance. This host-40 microbe metabolic interaction also enables bacteria to dramatically enhance the NAD-boosting 41 efficiency of nicotinamide supplementation in vitro and in vivo, demonstrating a crucial role of 42 microbes, gut microbiota in particular, in organismal NAD metabolism. 43 44 45 46 3 47 mycoplasma-infected cells (Fig. 2D, right). Taken together, our results indicate that mycoplasma 132 primarily affect NAD-mediated energy metabolism in host cells. 133The amidated (via NAM) and deamidated (via NA) salvage pathways of NAD 134 biosynthesis are isolated in vertebrate cells due to lack of a nicotinamidase activity that converts 135 NAM to NA (Fig. 1A). In contrast, multiple bacteria species encode nicotinamidases 19 . Given 136 the dramatic upregulation of the deamidated NAD precursors (NA and NAR) in mycoplasma-137 infected medium and cells ( Fig. S5B and 2B), we hypothesized that protection from NAMPTi by 138