In a paper published last month in Nature Physics, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University demonstrates how certain types of bacteria can adapt to long-term exposure to antibiotics by changing their shape.
"Using single-cell experiments and theoretical modelling, we demonstrate that cell shape changes act as a feedback strategy to make bacteria more adaptive to surviving antibiotics," first author Shiladitya Banerjee explained.
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When exposed to less than lethal doses of the antibiotic chloramphenicol over multiple generations, the researchers found that the bacteria dramatically changed their shape by becoming wider and more curved. "These shape changes enable bacteria to overcome the stress of antibiotics and resume fast growth," Banerjee said.
The researchers came to this conclusion by developing a theoretical model to show how these physical changes allow the bacteria to attain a higher curvature and lower surface-to-volume ratio, which would allow fewer antibiotic particles to pass through their cellular surfaces as they grow.
"This insight is of great consequence to human health and will likely stimulate numerous further molecular studies into the role of cell shape on bacterial growth and antibiotic resistance," Banerjee added.