Must Read: Study Finds That Bacteria 'Sleeps' And Then Rapidly Evolve, To Resist Antibiotic Treatments

A recent study conducted by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found an amazing alternative path to the evolution of resistance in bacteria. They discovered that bacterial population can then evolve resistance 20 times faster than normal after evolving a dormancy mechanism.

After this, the researchers note that the continuous administration of antibiotics would not have any adverse effect on the bacteria. Antibiotic resistance has come to be known as a major problem worldwide, as it is said to be rising to dangerously high levels across the globe with new resistance mechanisms emerging and spreading globally.

The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that this is threatening human ability to treat common infectious diseases. However, it is still not clear how these bacterial resistance mechanisms occur and whether their evolution can predicted.

Previous studies have shown that one way, through which bacteria can survive antibiotics is to evolve a timer that keeps them dormant when antibiotic treatment is in progress. But since the antibiotic treatments do not kill them unless they wake up, the best solution is to continue the treatment for a longer duration, according to Express.

The researchers of the current study, in order to investigate into the evolutionary process, exposed bacterial populations to a daily dose of antibiotics in controlled laboratory conditions, until they established a resistance. Tracking the bacteria during the evolutionary process, they found that the lethal antibiotic dosage gave rise to bacteria that were transiently dormant and were protected from several types of antibiotics that target actively growing bacteria.

The researchers discovered that once the bacteria gain the ability to go dormant, which is also known as tolerance, they rapidly acquired mutations to resistance and are able to survive antibiotic treatment. The bacteria first evolve to sleep for most of the antibiotic treatment, and then the sleeping mode not only transiently protected them from the lethal effect of the antibiotics but also later helps the bacteria to acquire resistance factors.

The researchers note that their findings results suggest that tolerance may play a key role in the evolution of resistance in bacterial under cyclic exposures to high antibiotic concentrations. The key factors include the fact that tolerance arises as a result of the large numbers of possible mutations that cause it.

Also, the combined impact of resistance and tolerance promotes the development of a partial resistance mutation on a tolerant background. Their findings could also have implications on the development of new antibiotics, as they invariably suggest that the only way to delay the evolution of resistance is by using drugs that can target the tolerant bacteria, according to Science Daily.

The biophysical approach of the researchers helped to unveil the evolutionary dynamics of antibiotic resistance. The experiments were conducted by physicists that were able to develop a theoretical model and computer simulations that aided in providing a deep understanding of the reason behind the fast evolution of resistance observed. They published their findings in the journal Science.