Thursday, December 5, 2013

[Science] The Innate Growth Bistability and Fitness Landscapes of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Question

When we culture the bacteria, sometimes we can observe some bacteria may become resistant to antibiotics. How to predict the emergence of drug resistance? What is the growth state of bacteria in the presence of drugs? One Science article from UCSD Physics investigates the issue using both bulk and single-cell techniques, and further builds up a model to predict the growth rate of the resistant bacteria strain under different drug concentration. 


Summary


They observed that the resistant bacteria either grow or do not grow (i.e., growth bistability) when the drug concentration is less than minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). In addition, their model is able to predict the growth rate of bacteria under different concentration, and the concentration range in which the growth bistability occurs. They suggested that the model can be used to further study the evolution of drug resistance.


Opinion

As Chang-Ting Jason Lin said, the paper combines the quantitative model in system biology and the single-cell method to study the drug resistance, which may be a hot issue.



 2013 Nov 29;342(6162):1237435. doi: 10.1126/science.1237435.

The innate growth bistability and fitness landscapes of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Source

Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0374, USA.