Publication
Potential for adaptation overrides cost of resistance
| Summary: | To investigate the cost of antibiotic resistance versus the potential for resistant clones to adapt in maintaining polymorphism for resistance. Materials & methods: Experimental evolution of Escherichia coli carrying different resistance alleles was performed under an environment devoid of antibiotics and evolutionary parameters estimated from their frequencies along time. Results & conclusion: Costly resistance mutations were found to coexist with lower cost resistances for hundreds of generations, contrary to the hypothesis that the cost of a resistance dictates its extinction. Estimated evolutionary parameters for the different resistance backgrounds suggest a higher adaptive potential of clones with costly antibiotic resistance mutations, overriding their initial cost of resistance and allowing their maintenance in the absence of drugs. |
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| Main Authors: | Moura de Sousa, Jorge |
| Other Authors: | Sousa, Ana; Bourgard, Catarina; Gordo, Isabel |
| Subject: | antibiotic resistance clonal interference epistasis evolvability experimental evolution |
| Year: | 2015 |
| Country: | Portugal |
| Document type: | article |
| Access type: | open access |
| Associated institution: | Repositório do GIMM – Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine |
| Language: | English |
| Origin: | ARCA |
| Summary: | To investigate the cost of antibiotic resistance versus the potential for resistant clones to adapt in maintaining polymorphism for resistance. Materials & methods: Experimental evolution of Escherichia coli carrying different resistance alleles was performed under an environment devoid of antibiotics and evolutionary parameters estimated from their frequencies along time. Results & conclusion: Costly resistance mutations were found to coexist with lower cost resistances for hundreds of generations, contrary to the hypothesis that the cost of a resistance dictates its extinction. Estimated evolutionary parameters for the different resistance backgrounds suggest a higher adaptive potential of clones with costly antibiotic resistance mutations, overriding their initial cost of resistance and allowing their maintenance in the absence of drugs. |
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