ArticleScientific reports2016
Stochastic expression of a multiple antibiotic resistance activator confers transient resistance in single cells.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 71 papers.
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Who cites it
71 citing papers in PubMed.
- Dissecting autonomous enzymatic variability in single cells.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Heterogeneity in microbial antibiotic responses: genetic basis and within-host evolution.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2026Review
- Impact of variability in cell generation times on cell-to-cell variability of protein concentrations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Persistent Gaps in the Ultimate Mechanisms of Antimicrobial-Induced Bacterial Killing.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Beyond Resistance: Phenotypic Plasticity in Bacterial Responses to Antibiotics, Oxidative Stress and Antimicrobial Photodynamic Inactivation.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Highly Drug-Resistant Escherichia coli from Hospital Wastewater with Several Evolutionary Mutations: An Integrated Insights from Molecular, Computational, and Biophysics.Molecular biotechnology · 2026Article
- Probing Antibiotic Inhibition in Small Bacterial Populations With Combinatorial Droplet Microfluidics.Small science · 2026Article
- Implications of gene expression heterogeneity in the interplay between acquired resistance and bacterial metabolism.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Heterogeneous efflux pump expression underpins phenotypic resistance to antimicrobial peptides.eLife · 2025Article
- Systematic screen uncovers regulator contributions to chemical cues in Escherichia coli.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Evaluating the predictive power of combined gene expression dynamics from single cells on antibiotic survival.mSystems · 2025Article
- Cyclo-stationary distributions of mRNA and Protein counts for random cell division times.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Stochastic gene expression in proliferating cells: Differing noise intensity in single-cell and population perspectives.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Lineage-dependent variations in single-cell antibiotic susceptibility reveal the selective inheritance of phenotypic resistance in bacteria.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Coordination of cell envelope biology by Escherichia coli MarA protein potentiates intrinsic antibiotic resistance.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Pulsatile basal gene expression as a fitness determinant in bacteria.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Microbiota of Cheese Ecosystems: A Perspective on Cheesemaking.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Interplay between porin deficiency, fitness, and virulence in carbapenem-non-susceptible Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacteriaceae.PLoS pathogens · 2025Review
- Anti-correlation of LacI association and dissociation rates observed in living cells.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Single-cell transcriptomes reveal spatiotemporal heat stress response in maize roots.Nature communications · 2025Article
11 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
Transient resistance can allow microorganisms to temporarily survive lethal concentrations of antibiotics. This can be accomplished through stochastic mechanisms, where individual cells within a population display diverse phenotypes to hedge against the appearance of an antibiotic. To date, research on transient stochastic resistance has focused primarily on mechanisms where a subpopulation of cells enters a dormant, drug-tolerant state. However, a fundamental question is whether stochastic gene expression can also generate variable resistance levels among growing cells in a population. We hypothesized that stochastic expression of antibiotic-inducible resistance mechanisms might play such a role. To investigate this, we focused on a prototypical example of such a system: the multiple antibiotic resistance activator MarA. Previous studies have shown that induction of MarA can lead to a multidrug resistant phenotype at the population level. We asked whether MarA expression also has a stochastic component, even when uninduced. Time lapse microscopy showed that isogenic cells express heterogeneous, dynamic levels of MarA, which were correlated with transient antibiotic survival. This finding has important clinical implications, as stochastic expression of resistance genes may be widespread, allowing populations to hedge against the sudden appearance of an antibiotic.
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