Polyclonal pathogen populations accelerate the evolution of antibiotic resistance in patients
New Voices in Infection Biology
- Date: Mar 16, 2022
- Time: 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Rachel Wheatley
- University of Oxford, Fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
- Location: Zoom video conference
- Host: Felix M. Key
- Contact: vseminars@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de
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Talk abstract:
Antibiotic resistance poses a global health threat, but the within-host drivers of resistance remain poorly understood. Pathogen populations are often assumed to be clonal within hosts, and resistance is thought to emerge due to selection for de novo variants. Here we show that pulmonary populations of the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa in ICU patients are often polyclonal. Crucially, resistance evolves rapidly in patients colonized by polyclonal populations through selection for pre-existing resistant strains. In contrast, resistance evolves sporadically in patients colonized by monoclonal populations due to selection for novel resistance mutations. The within-host diversity of pathogen populations can play a key role in shaping the emergence of resistance in response to treatment in clinical settings.