ArticlePLoS genetics2011
Pervasive sign epistasis between conjugative plasmids and drug-resistance chromosomal mutations.
Article in PLoS genetics, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 70 papers.
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Who cites it
70 citing papers in PubMed.
- Resistance potentiators: Evolutionary catalysts of antibiotic resistance.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Plug-and-play evolution of the Klebsiella pneumoniae capsule locus enables serotype exchange across genetic backgrounds.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Dietary intake of enrofloxacin promotes the spread of antibiotic resistance from food to simulated human gut.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Variations in carbapenem resistance associated with the VIM-1 metallo-β-lactamase across theMicrobiology (Reading, England) · 2026Article
- Emergence of alternative stable states in microbial communities undergoing horizontal gene transfer.eLife · 2025Article
- What Is the Impact of Antibiotic Resistance Determinants on the Bacterial Death Rate?Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- A plasmid with theMicrobiology (Reading, England) · 2025Article
- Costs of antibiotic resistance genes depend on host strain and environment and can influence community composition.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Horizontal gene transfer is predicted to overcome the diversity limit of competing microbial species.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Mechanistic causes of sign epistasis and its applications.Frontiers in genetics · 2024Review
- Article
- Chance Favors the Prepared Genomes: Horizontal Transfer Shapes the Emergence of Antibiotic Resistance Mutations in Core Genes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Intrahost evolution of the gut microbiota.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2023Review
- The Impact of Non-Pathogenic Bacteria on the Spread of Virulence and Resistance Genes.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- The fitness cost of horizontally transferred and mutational antimicrobial resistance inFrontiers in microbiology · 2023Review
- Article
- Translational demand is not a major source of plasmid-associated fitness costs.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Evolutionary Pathways and Trajectories in Antibiotic Resistance.Clinical microbiology reviews · 2021Article
- Interplay between Bacterial Clones and Plasmids in the Spread of Antibiotic Resistance Genes in the Gut: Lessons from a Temporal Study in Veal Calves.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2021Article
- Piggybacking on Niche Adaptation Improves the Maintenance of Multidrug-Resistance Plasmids.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
10 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Multidrug-resistant bacteria arise mostly by the accumulation of plasmids and chromosomal mutations. Typically, these resistant determinants are costly to the bacterial cell. Yet, recently, it has been found that, in Escherichia coli bacterial cells, a mutation conferring resistance to an antibiotic can be advantageous to the bacterial cell if another antibiotic-resistance mutation is already present, a phenomenon called sign epistasis. Here we study the interaction between antibiotic-resistance chromosomal mutations and conjugative (i.e., self-transmissible) plasmids and find many cases of sign epistasis (40%)--including one of reciprocal sign epistasis where the strain carrying both resistance determinants is fitter than the two strains carrying only one of the determinants. This implies that the acquisition of an additional resistance plasmid or of a resistance mutation often increases the fitness of a bacterial strain already resistant to antibiotics. We further show that there is an overall antagonistic interaction between mutations and plasmids (52%). These results further complicate expectations of resistance reversal by interdiction of antibiotic use.
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