ArticleMicrobiology spectrum2024
Sub-inhibitory antibiotic treatment selects for enhanced metabolic efficiency.
Article in Microbiology spectrum, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Integrated Transcriptomics and Metabolomic Profiling Suggests That Thymol Adaptation Induces Multi-Layered Envelope and Metabolic Perturbations That SensitizeInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- The Adaptations ofThe Canadian journal of infectious diseases & medical microbiology = Journal canadien des maladies infectieuses et de la microbiologie medicale · 2026Article
- A foundation model for microbial growth dynamics.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Review
- The role of bacterial metabolism in antimicrobial resistance.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2025Review
- Interactions within higher-order antibiotic combinations do not influence the rate of adaptation in bacteria.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2025Article
- The tradeoffs between persistence and mutation rates at sub-inhibitory antibiotic concentrations inMicrobiology spectrum · 2025Article
- The metabolic burden associated with plasmid acquisition: An assessment of the unrecognized benefits to host cells.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2025Review
- Chloramphenicol and gentamicin reduce the evolution of resistance to phage ΦX174 by suppressing a subset of E. coli LPS mutants.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- The Tradeoffs Between Persistence and Mutation Rates at Sub-Inhibitory Antibiotic Concentrations inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Bacterial growth and metabolic rates are often closely related. However, under antibiotic selection, a paradox in this relationship arises: antibiotic efficacy decreases when bacteria are metabolically dormant, yet antibiotics select for resistant cells that grow fastest during treatment. That is, antibiotic selection counterintuitively favors bacteria with fast growth but slow metabolism. Despite this apparent contradiction, antibiotic resistant cells have historically been characterized primarily in the context of growth, whereas the extent of analogous changes in metabolism is comparatively unknown. Here, we observed that previously evolved antibiotic-resistant strains exhibited a unique relationship between growth and metabolism whereby nutrient utilization became more efficient, regardless of the growth rate. To better understand this unexpected phenomenon, we used a simplified model to simulate bacterial populations adapting to sub-inhibitory antibiotic selection through successive bottlenecking events. Simulations predicted that sub-inhibitory bactericidal antibiotic concentrations could select for enhanced metabolic efficiency, defined based on nutrient utilization: drug-adapted cells are able to achieve the same biomass while utilizing less substrate, even in the absence of treatment. Moreover, simulations predicted that restoring metabolic efficiency would re-sensitize resistant bacteria exhibiting metabolic-dependent resistance; we confirmed this result using adaptive laboratory evolutions of
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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.