Ecological effects of stress drive bacterial evolvability under sub-inhibitory antibiotic treatments

Stress is thought to increase mutation rate and thus to accelerate evolution. In the context of antibiotic resistance, sub-inhibitory treatments could then lead to enhanced evolvability, thereby fuelling the adaptation of pathogens. Combining wet-lab experiments, stochastic simulations and a meta-an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inISME Communications Vol. 2; no. 1; p. 80
Main Authors Vasse, Marie, Bonhoeffer, Sebastian, Frenoy, Antoine
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Springer Nature B.V 02.09.2022
Springer Nature
Nature Publishing Group UK
Oxford University Press
Subjects
Antibiotic resistance
Antibiotics
Bacteria
Drug resistance
E coli
Ecological effects
Evolution
Genetic analysis
Genetic diversity
Life Sciences
Mutagenesis
Mutation
Mutation rates
Population number
Quantitative genetics
Regrowth
Simulation
Stochasticity
Streptococcus infections
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Summary:Stress is thought to increase mutation rate and thus to accelerate evolution. In the context of antibiotic resistance, sub-inhibitory treatments could then lead to enhanced evolvability, thereby fuelling the adaptation of pathogens. Combining wet-lab experiments, stochastic simulations and a meta-analysis of the literature, we found that the increase in mutation rates triggered by antibiotic treatments is often cancelled out by reduced population size, resulting in no overall increase in genetic diversity. A careful analysis of the effect of ecological factors on genetic diversity showed that the potential for regrowth during recovery phase after treatment plays a crucial role in evolvability, being the main factor associated with increased genetic diversity in experimental data.
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ISSN:2730-6151
2730-6151
DOI:10.1038/s43705-022-00157-w