Multidrug tolerance of biofilms and persister cells

K Lewis - Bacterial biofilms, 2008 - Springer
Bacterial biofilms, 2008Springer
Bacterial populations produce a small number of dormant persister cells that exhibit
multidrug tolerance. All resistance mechanisms do essentially the same thing: prevent the
antibiotic from hitting a target. By contrast, tolerance apparently works by shutting down the
targets. Bactericidal antibiotics kill bacteria by corrupting their targets, rather than merely
inhibiting them. Shutting down the targets then protects from killing. The number of persisters
in a growing population of bacteria rises at mid-log and reaches a maximum of …
Abstract
Bacterial populations produce a small number of dormant persister cells that exhibit multidrug tolerance. All resistance mechanisms do essentially the same thing: prevent the antibiotic from hitting a target. By contrast, tolerance apparently works by shutting down the targets. Bactericidal antibiotics kill bacteria by corrupting their targets, rather than merely inhibiting them. Shutting down the targets then protects from killing. The number of persisters in a growing population of bacteria rises at mid-log and reaches a maximum of approximately 1% at stationary state. Similarly, slow-growing biofilms produce substantial numbers of persisters. The ability of a biofilm to limit the access of the immune system components, and the ability of persisters to sustain an antibiotic attack could then account for the recalcitrance of such infections in vivo and for their relapsing nature. Isolation of Escherichia coli persisters by lysing a population or by sorting GFP-expressing cells with diminished translation allowed to obtain a gene expression profile.
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