ArticlePLoS pathogens2014
Antimicrobials, stress and mutagenesis.
Article in PLoS pathogens, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ciprofloxacin-Based Ionic Liquids Increase Mutation Frequency inAntibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Ib-M1 Antimicrobial Peptide Alters Membrane Permeability and DisruptsMicroorganisms · 2026Article
- Review
- AMPSeek: A Workflow for Predicting Antimicrobial Peptide Activity, Three-Dimensional Structure, and Toxicity.Current protocols · 2026Article
- Alternative nucleic acid structures in microbial biology: regulatory functions and antimicrobial opportunities.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Review
- Overcoming multidrug resistance: antimicrobial peptides as a next-generation therapeutic strategy.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Review
- Extracellular defense of bacteria against antimicrobial peptides.Journal of bacteriology · 2025Review
- In Vitro and In Vivo Characterization of Novel Cathelicidin-Based Peptides with Antimicrobial Activity AgainstAntibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The role of bacterial metabolism in antimicrobial resistance.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2025Review
- Exploring Use of a Protein Cage System for Producing Bioactive Peptides in Escherichia coli.Microbial biotechnology · 2025Article
- The many dimensions of combination therapy: How to combine antibiotics to limit resistance evolution.Evolutionary applications · 2024Article
- Site Mutation Improves the Expression and Antimicrobial Properties of Fungal Defense.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- The pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modelling framework as a tool to predict drug resistance evolution.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- Sequential antibiotic therapy in the laboratory and in the patient.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Application of antimicrobial peptides in plant protection: making use of the overlooked merits.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Review
- Editorial: Community series in antimicrobial peptides: Molecular design, structure function relationship and biosynthesis optimization.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Incorporation of Non-Canonical Amino Acids into Antimicrobial Peptides: Advances, Challenges, and Perspectives.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2022Review
- Antibacterial Potential Analysis of Novel α-Helix Peptides in the Chinese Wolf SpiderPharmaceutics · 2022Article
- Ecological effects of stress drive bacterial evolvability under sub-inhibitory antibiotic treatments.ISME communications · 2022Article
- Rescuing humanity by antimicrobial peptides against colistin-resistant bacteria.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cationic antimicrobial peptides are ancient and ubiquitous immune effectors that multicellular organisms use to kill and police microbes whereas antibiotics are mostly employed by microorganisms. As antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) mostly target the cell wall, a microbial 'Achilles heel', it has been proposed that bacterial resistance evolution is very unlikely and hence AMPs are ancient 'weapons' of multicellular organisms. Here we provide a new hypothesis to explain the widespread distribution of AMPs amongst multicellular organism. Studying five antimicrobial peptides from vertebrates and insects, we show, using a classic Luria-Delbrück fluctuation assay, that cationic antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) do not increase bacterial mutation rates. Moreover, using rtPCR and disc diffusion assays we find that AMPs do not elicit SOS or rpoS bacterial stress pathways. This is in contrast to the main classes of antibiotics that elevate mutagenesis via eliciting the SOS and rpoS pathways. The notion of the 'Achilles heel' has been challenged by experimental selection for AMP-resistance, but our findings offer a new perspective on the evolutionary success of AMPs. Employing AMPs seems advantageous for multicellular organisms, as it does not fuel the adaptation of bacteria to their immune defenses. This has important consequences for our understanding of host-microbe interactions, the evolution of innate immune defenses, and also sheds new light on antimicrobial resistance evolution and the use of AMPs as drugs.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.