Antibiotic tolerance is associated with a broad and complex transcriptional response in E. coli

Antibiotic treatment kills a large portion of a population, while a small, tolerant subpopulation survives. Tolerant bacteria disrupt antibiotic efficacy and increase the likelihood that a population gains antibiotic resistance, a growing health concern. We examined how E. coli transcriptional networks changed in response to lethal ampicillin concentrations. We are the first to apply transcriptional regulatory network (TRN) analysis to antibiotic tolerance by leveraging existing knowledge and our transcriptional data. TRN analysis shows that gene expression changes specific to ampicillin treatment are likely caused by specific sigma and transcription factors typically regulated by proteolysis. These results demonstrate that to survive lethal concentration of ampicillin specific regulatory proteins change activity and cause a coordinated transcriptional response that leverages multiple gene systems.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  Scientific Reports

• Publication date

  2020-08-27

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/s41598-021-85509-7PMID 33731833PMCID 7969968
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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