Modulating the evolutionary trajectory of tolerance using antibiotics with different metabolic dependencies

Abstract

Antibiotic tolerance, or the ability of bacteria to survive antibiotic treatment in the absence of genetic resistance, often involves a low metabolic state. Here, Zheng et al. show that tolerance does not readily evolve against antibiotics whose efficacy is only minimally affected by bacterial metabolism, and find that cycling of antibiotics with different metabolic dependencies interrupts evolution of tolerance.