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Horizontal Evolution And Vertical Evolution Of Antibiotic Resistance

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Antibiotic resistance occurring naturally is obvious. Genes for resistance to antibiotics, like antibiotics themselves, are prehistoric [13]. It is the nature of every living organism to be nature driven resistant with time. In a study, few factors are identified to be responsible for the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Bacterial fitness, infection dynamics, cross-resistance, co-selection, horizontal gene transfer (HGT), epistasis together can predict the AR [14]. Bacterial fitness is defined as the relative ability to survive, reproduce and propagate in an environment. Bacterial fitness depends on Survival assays in vitro in different conditions (stationary phase of growth cycle, different drug concentrations), Growth rate in different …show more content…

In two diverse ways evolution of AR occurs: Vertical evolution and Horizontal evolution. In vertical evolution, mutations that enhance antibiotic tolerance are selected for and transmitted to the progeny, where as in horizontal evolution, antibiotic resistance genes are acquired from other bacteria, through one of the ways of conjugation, transduction or transformation, and are subsequently transmitted to the progeny [Fig-2]. Horizontal evolution contributes to most of current resistance problems. When resistance to one drug confers resistance to other drugs is called cross-resistance. It is the tolerance to a usually toxic substance because of exposure to a similarly acting substance. Co-resistance refers to the presence of resistance to more than one class of antibiotics in the same bacterial strain as might occur on a plasmid. Mutation rate is one of the crucial factors for predicting bacterial fitness as well as resistance. It is responsible for genetic heterogeneity. Bacterial population size affect resistance as well as bacterial fitness. Bacterial population sizes in infected hosts seem to be >108 bacteria per infection site [14]. The AR is also conferred by the resistance mechanism and the conditions under which resistance is measured. Bacterial fitness is also affected using increasing concentrations of antibiotic. The existence of genes in bacterial genomes that generate resistance by itself is intrinsic resistance. Many bacteria have this resistance [15]. Gene pickup, heterologous expression, HGT, and mutation are associated with resistance development

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