Fitness Costs of Antibiotic Resistance Impede the Evolution of Resistance to Other Antibiotics.

ABSTRACT: Antibiotic resistance is a major threat to global health, claiming the lives of millions every year. With a nearly dry antibiotic development pipeline, novel strategies are urgently needed to combat resistant pathogens. One emerging strategy is the use of sequential antibiotic therapy, postulated to reduce the rate at which antibiotic resistance evolves. Here, we use the soft agar gradient evolution (SAGE) system to carry out high-throughput in vitro bacterial evolution against antibiotic pressure. We find that evolution of resistance to the antibiotic chloramphenicol (CHL) severely affects bacterial fitness, slowing the rate at which resistance to the antibiotics nitrofurantoin and streptomycin emerges. In vitro acquisition of compensatory mutations in the CHL-resistant cells markedly imp

SUBMITTER: Chowdhury FR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10581211 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature