Malthusian Parameters as Estimators of the Fitness of Microbes: A Cautionary Tale about the Low Side of High Throughput.

ABSTRACT: The maximum exponential growth rate, the Malthusian parameter (MP), is commonly used as a measure of fitness in experimental studies of adaptive evolution and of the effects of antibiotic resistance and other genes on the fitness of planktonic microbes. Thanks to automated, multi-well optical density plate readers and computers, with little hands-on effort investigators can readily obtain hundreds of estimates of MPs in less than a day. Here we compare estimates of the relative fitness of antibiotic susceptible and resistant strains of E. coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus based on MP data obtained with automated multi-well plate readers with the results from pairwise competition experiments. This leads us to question the reliability of estimates of MP obtained with the

SUBMITTER: Concepcion-Acevedo J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4482697 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature