In the absence of antibiotic-mediated selection, sensitive bacteria are expected to displace their resistant counterparts if resistance genes are costly. However, many resistance genes persist for long periods in the absence of antibiotics. Horizontal gene transfer (primarily conjugation) could explain this persistence, but it has been suggested that very high conjugation rates would be required. Here, we show that common conjugal plasmids, even when costly, are indeed transferred at sufficiently high rates to be maintained in the absence of antibiotics in Escherichia coli. The notion is applicable to nine plasmids from six major incompatibility groups and mixed populations carrying multiple plasmids. These results suggest that reducing antibiotic use alone is likely insufficient for reversing resistance. Therefore, combining conjugation inhibition and promoting plasmid loss would be an effective strategy to limit conjugation-assisted persistence of antibiotic resistance.

It is generally assumed that antibiotics can promote horizontal gene transfer (HGT). However, because of a variety of confounding factors that complicate the interpretation of previous studies, the mechanisms by which antibiotics modulate HGT remain poorly understood. In particular, it is unclear whether antibiotics directly regulate the efficiency of HGT, serve as a selection force to modulate population dynamics after HGT has occurred, or both. Here, we address this question by quantifying conjugation dynamics in the presence and absence of antibiotic-mediated selection. Surprisingly, we find that sub-lethal concentrations of antibiotics from the most widely used classes do not significantly increase the conjugation efficiency. Instead, our modeling and experimental results demonstrate that conjugation dynamics are dictated by antibiotic-mediated selection, which can both promote and suppress conjugation dynamics. Our findings suggest that the contribution of antibiotics to the promotion of HGT may have been overestimated. These findings have implications for designing effective antibiotic treatment protocols and for assessing the risks of antibiotic use.

Bacteria have developed resistance against every antibiotic at an alarming rate, considering the timescale at which new antibiotics are developed. Thus, there is a critical need to use antibiotics more effectively, extend the shelf life of existing antibiotics, and minimize their side effects. This requires understanding the mechanisms underlying bacterial drug responses. Past studies have focused on survival in the presence of antibiotics by individual cells, as genetic mutants or persisters. In contrast, a population of bacterial cells can collectively survive antibiotic treatments lethal to individual cells. This tolerance can arise by diverse mechanisms, including resistance-conferring enzyme production, titration-mediated bistable growth inhibition, swarming, and inter-population interactions. These strategies can enable rapid population recovery after antibiotic treatment, and provide a time window for otherwise susceptible bacteria to acquire inheritable genetic resistance. Here, we emphasize the potential for targeting collective antibiotic tolerance behaviors as an antibacterial treatment strategy.

A body of evidence has shown that the control of E2F transcription factor activity is critical for determining cell cycle entry and cell proliferation. However, an understanding of the precise determinants of this control, including the role of other cell-cycle regulatory activities, has not been clearly defined. Here, recognizing that the contributions of individual regulatory components could be masked by heterogeneity in populations of cells, we model the potential roles of individual components together with the use of an integrated system to follow E2F dynamics at the single-cell level and in real time. These analyses reveal that crossing a threshold amplitude of E2F accumulation determines cell cycle commitment. Importantly, we find that Myc is critical in modulating the amplitude, whereas cyclin D/E activities have little effect on amplitude but do contribute to the modulation of duration of E2F activation, thereby affecting the pace of cell cycle progression.

The efficacy of many antibiotics decreases with increasing bacterial density, a phenomenon called the ‘inoculum effect' (IE). This study reveals that, for ribosome-targeting antibiotics, IE is due to bistable inhibition of bacterial growth, which reduces the efficacy of certain treatment frequencies.