ReviewPLoS pathogens2021
Bacterial evolution during human infection: Adapt and live or adapt and die.
Review in PLoS pathogens, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers.
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Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed.
- Simulating the host niche: balancing complexity and control in the experimental evolution of antibiotic resistance and pathoadaptation.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2026Review
- Insertion sequence elements associated with Staphylococcus epidermidis evolution in persistent orthopaedic device-related infections.BMC genomics · 2026Article
- Characterization ofMicrobiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Infectious medical waste (IMW) and disease transmission: A critical public health challenge in Africa and the global implications - A systematic review.Journal of public health research · 2026Article
- High-depth whole genome sequencing of blood culture plates reveals evolutionary dynamics in cases of persistent bacteremia due to methicillin-resistantbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Rapid evolution of Klebsiella pneumoniae biofilms in vitro delineates adaptive changes selected during infection.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Bacterial pore-forming toxins: mechanisms and implications for host immunity.Bioscience reports · 2026Review
- Prevalence of respiratory viruses and nasal colonization by antimicrobial-resistant bacteria among people living with HIV in Ghana.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Resistance, heteroresistance, and fitness costs drive colistin treatment failure duringProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Codon bias variation in Staphylococcus aureus.PloS one · 2026Article
- Comprehensive in silico analysis of Acinetobacter isolates from South Korea reveals genomic diversity, antimicrobial resistance, virulence factors, and evolutionary dynamics.Genes & genomics · 2026Article
- Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Bacteremia Relapses Show Diverse Genomic Profiles but Convergence in Bacteremia-Associated Genes.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Resistance, heteroresistance and fitness costs drive colistin treatment failure duringbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- deepBreaks identifies and prioritizes genotype-phenotype associations using machine learning.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Parallel within-host evolution alters virulence factors in an opportunistic Klebsiella pneumoniae during a hospital outbreak.Nature communications · 2025Article
- De novo mutations mediate phenotypic switching in an opportunistic human lung pathogen.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Methylglyoxal is an antibacterial effector produced by macrophages during infection.Cell host & microbe · 2025Article
- Coinfection by multipleMicrobiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2025Review
- From Petri Dishes to Patients to Populations: Scales and Evolutionary Mechanisms Driving Antibiotic Resistance.Annual review of microbiology · 2024Review
- Niche-specific metabolic phenotypes can be used to identify antimicrobial targets in pathogens.PLoS biology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Microbes are constantly evolving. Laboratory studies of bacterial evolution increase our understanding of evolutionary dynamics, identify adaptive changes, and answer important questions that impact human health. During bacterial infections in humans, however, the evolutionary parameters acting on infecting populations are likely to be much more complex than those that can be tested in the laboratory. Nonetheless, human infections can be thought of as naturally occurring in vivo bacterial evolution experiments, which can teach us about antibiotic resistance, pathogenesis, and transmission. Here, we review recent advances in the study of within-host bacterial evolution during human infection and discuss practical considerations for conducting such studies. We focus on 2 possible outcomes for de novo adaptive mutations, which we have termed "adapt-and-live" and "adapt-and-die." In the adapt-and-live scenario, a mutation is long lived, enabling its transmission on to other individuals, or the establishment of chronic infection. In the adapt-and-die scenario, a mutation is rapidly extinguished, either because it carries a substantial fitness cost, it arises within tissues that block transmission to new hosts, it is outcompeted by more fit clones, or the infection resolves. Adapt-and-die mutations can provide rich information about selection pressures in vivo, yet they can easily elude detection because they are short lived, may be more difficult to sample, or could be maladaptive in the long term. Understanding how bacteria adapt under each of these scenarios can reveal new insights about the basic biology of pathogenic microbes and could aid in the design of new translational approaches to combat bacterial infections.
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