Rolling the evolutionary dice: Neisseria commensals as proxies for elucidating the underpinnings of antibiotic resistance mechanisms and evolution in human pathogens.

ABSTRACT: Species within the genus Neisseria are especially adept at sharing adaptive allelic variation across species' boundaries, with commensal species repeatedly transferring resistance to their pathogenic relative N. gonorrhoeae. However, resistance in commensal Neisseria is infrequently characterized at both the phenotypic and genotypic levels, limiting our ability to predict novel and potentially transferable resistance mechanisms that ultimately may become important clinically. Unique evolutionary starting places of each Neisseria species will have distinct genomic backgrounds, which may ultimately control the fate of evolving populations in response to selection, as epistatic and additive interactions may coerce lineages along divergent evolutionary trajectories.

SUBMITTER: Frost KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10557713 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature