Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

The Effect of Horizontal Gene Transfer on the Dynamics of Antibiotic Drug Resistance in a Unicellular Population with a Dynamic Fitness Landscape, Repression and De-repression

Yoav Atsmon-Raz, Nathaniel Wagner, Emanuel David Tannenbaum
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/022012
Yoav Atsmon-Raz
*Department of Chemistry, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Nathaniel Wagner
*Department of Chemistry, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Emanuel David Tannenbaum
*Department of Chemistry, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Antibiotic drug resistance spreads through horizontal gene transfer (HGT) via bacterial conjugation in unicellular populations of bacteria. Consequently, the efficiency of antibiotics is limited and the expected “grace period” of novel antibiotics is typically quite short. One of the mechanisms that allow the accelerated adaptation of bacteria to antibiotics is bacterial conjugation. However, bacterial conjugation is regulated by several biological factors, with one of the most important ones being repression and derepression.

In recent work, we have studied the effects that repression and de-repression on the mutation-selection balance of an HGT-enabled bacterial population in a static environment. Two of our main findings were that conjugation has a deleterious effect on the mean fitness of the population and that repression is expected to allow a restoration of the fitness cost due to plasmid hosting.

Here, we consider the effect that conjugation-mediated HGT has on the speed of adaptation in a dynamic environment and the effect that repression will have on the dynamics of antibiotic drug resistance. We find that, the effect of repression is dynamic in its possible outcome, that a conjugators to non-conjugators phase transition exists in a dynamic landscape as we have previously found for a static landscape and we quantify the time required for a unicellular population to adapt to a new antibiotic in a periodically changing fitness landscape. Our results also confirmed that HGT accelerates adaptation for a population of prokaryotes which agrees with current knowledge, that HGT rates increase when a population is put under stress.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted July 06, 2015.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
The Effect of Horizontal Gene Transfer on the Dynamics of Antibiotic Drug Resistance in a Unicellular Population with a Dynamic Fitness Landscape, Repression and De-repression
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
The Effect of Horizontal Gene Transfer on the Dynamics of Antibiotic Drug Resistance in a Unicellular Population with a Dynamic Fitness Landscape, Repression and De-repression
Yoav Atsmon-Raz, Nathaniel Wagner, Emanuel David Tannenbaum
bioRxiv 022012; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/022012
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
The Effect of Horizontal Gene Transfer on the Dynamics of Antibiotic Drug Resistance in a Unicellular Population with a Dynamic Fitness Landscape, Repression and De-repression
Yoav Atsmon-Raz, Nathaniel Wagner, Emanuel David Tannenbaum
bioRxiv 022012; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/022012

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Evolutionary Biology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4229)
  • Biochemistry (9109)
  • Bioengineering (6753)
  • Bioinformatics (23944)
  • Biophysics (12103)
  • Cancer Biology (9498)
  • Cell Biology (13744)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7617)
  • Ecology (11664)
  • Epidemiology (2066)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15479)
  • Genetics (10620)
  • Genomics (14297)
  • Immunology (9467)
  • Microbiology (22795)
  • Molecular Biology (9078)
  • Neuroscience (48894)
  • Paleontology (355)
  • Pathology (1479)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2565)
  • Physiology (3824)
  • Plant Biology (8309)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1467)
  • Synthetic Biology (2290)
  • Systems Biology (6172)
  • Zoology (1297)