Oscillatory dynamics in a bacterial cross-protection mutualism.

ABSTRACT: Cooperation between microbes can enable microbial communities to survive in harsh environments. Enzymatic deactivation of antibiotics, a common mechanism of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, is a cooperative behavior that can allow resistant cells to protect sensitive cells from antibiotics. Understanding how bacterial populations survive antibiotic exposure is important both clinically and ecologically, yet the implications of cooperative antibiotic deactivation on the population and evolutionary dynamics remain poorly understood, particularly in the presence of more than one antibiotic. Here, we show that two Escherichia coli strains can form an effective cross-protection mutualism, protecting each other in the presence of two antibiotics (ampicillin and chloramphenicol) so that the coc

SUBMITTER: Yurtsev EA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4896713 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature