Speaker
Description
Treating Escherichia coli with the antibiotic cefotaxime at sub-MIC concentrations leads to complex responses: (i) filamentation of cells, which is known to be related to delayed lysis and enhanced antibiotic tolerance, (ii) higher biomass growth rates at intermediate antibiotic concentrations, and (iii) increased stochastic variation of the growth rate with growing antibiotic concentrations. Moreover, we find that the filamentation displays complex time-dependent dynamics, with a crossover from filamented to normal-sized cells at long times near the MIC. We explore the relationship between filamentation, growth rates, and the time-dependent drug concentration in the medium through experiments and modeling, and discuss possible consequences for the evolution of drug resistance.
