Kim group shows that power law tail in replication lag time underlies bacterial persistence
Persisters are antibiotic-tolerant cells that can evade antibiotic killing by ceasing replication. They complicate antibiotic treatment, leading to treatment failure. Professor Minsu Kim and graduate student (now Ph.D.) Emrah Simsek quantitatively analyzed the non-replication periods of the persisters, and show that their distribution exhibits a long tail, that is characterized by a power-law decay. Mathematical modeling was used to show how the power-law decay arises. The model quantitatively accounts for the population dyanmics of persistence, and provides insight into the response of bacterial populations to antibiotics.
Citation:
Power-law tail in lag time distribution underlies bacterial persistence, Emrah Simsek and Minsu Kim, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 116, 17635-17640 (2019).
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