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Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on January 31, 2005.
Genetics, Vol. 169, 1807-1814, April 2005, Copyright © 2005
doi:10.1534/genetics.104.035352
Bacterial Persistence
A Model of Survival in Changing Environments
Edo Kussell*,1,
Roy Kishony
,
Nathalie Q. Balaban
and
Stanislas Leibler*
* Rockefeller University, New York, New York 10021-6399
Bauer Center for Genomics Research, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Racah Institute for Physics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
1 Corresponding author: Rockefeller University, 1230 York Ave., Box 34, New York, NY 10021-6399.
E-mail: kussele{at}mail.rockefeller.edu
The persistence phenotype is an epigenetic trait exhibited by a subpopulation of bacteria, characterized by slow growth coupled with an ability to survive antibiotic treatment. The phenotype is acquired via a spontaneous, reversible switch between normal and persister cells. These observations suggest that clonal bacterial populations may use persister cells, whose slow division rate under growth conditions leads to lower population fitness, as an "insurance policy" against antibiotic encounters. We present a model of Escherichia coli persistence, and using experimentally derived parameters for both wild type and a mutant strain (hipQ) with markedly different switching rates, we show how fitness loss due to slow persister growth pays off as a risk-reducing strategy. We demonstrate that wild-type persistence is suited for environments in which antibiotic stress is a rare event. The optimal rate of switching between normal and persister cells is found to depend strongly on the frequency of environmental changes and only weakly on the selective pressures of any given environment. In contrast to typical examples of adaptations to features of a single environment, persistence appears to constitute an adaptation that is tuned to the distribution of environmental change.
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