ArticleNature ecology & evolution2024
Horizontal gene transfer facilitates the molecular reverse-evolution of antibiotic sensitivity in experimental populations of H. pylori.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Berberine and Berberine-Derived Compounds as Promising Weapons AgainstPharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Unraveling the tempo and mode of horizontal gene transfer in bacteria.Trends in microbiology · 2025Review
- SWOT and Root Cause Analyses of Antimicrobial Resistance to Oral Antimicrobial Treatment of Cystitis.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
Reversing the evolution of traits harmful to humans, such as antimicrobial resistance, is a key ambition of applied evolutionary biology. A major impediment to reverse evolution is the relatively low spontaneous mutation rates that revert evolved genotypes back to their ancestral state. However, the repeated re-introduction of ancestral alleles by horizontal gene transfer (HGT) could make reverse evolution likely. Here we evolve populations of an antibiotic-resistant strain of Helicobacter pylori in growth conditions without antibiotics while introducing an ancestral antibiotic-sensitive allele by HGT. We evaluate reverse evolution using DNA sequencing and find that HGT facilitates the molecular reverse evolution of the antibiotic resistance allele, and that selection for high rates of HGT drives the evolution of increased HGT rates in low-HGT treatment populations. Finally, we use a theoretical model and carry out simulations to infer how the fitness costs of antibiotic resistance, rates of HGT and effects of genetic drift interact to determine the probability and predictability of reverse evolution.
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