Figure 5.

Delayed bacterial recovery from transient antibiotic treatment. (A) Recovery of a bacterial population after the removal of an antibiotic. For modeling studies, we defined recovery time (τ_lag) as the time from the removal of the antibiotic to the time when bacterial density starts to increase. (B) Recovery time increased much faster with fast degradation of ribosomes (black line, degradation rate=10⁻¹) than with slow degradation (gray line, degradation rate=10⁻⁶). k₀=10⁻⁶, k₁=0.1, V₁=0.2, k_u=0.1, k_f=1, k_b=0.1, k_in=3, k_out=0.03, k_r=0.02, and A_out=10 (which corresponds to an intermediate concentration). See Supplementary Equations S1–S5 and S16. (C) Population recovery after transient antibiotic treatment. We incubated bacteria in a flow system (Supplementary Figure S5A and B) in medium supplemented with either 10 μg/ml kanamycin or 10 μg/ml chloramphenicol. After treatment for a specific duration (i.e., treatment duration), we washed bacteria using fresh medium, tracked population growth and quantified recovery time as the time required for a population to increase above its initial density after antibiotic treatment. When treated with kanamycin, recovery time increased significantly with treatment duration (filled squares). In contrast, with chloramphenicol, recovery time stayed nearly constant (open squares). Lines of best fit, as determined visually, are shown. See Supplementary Figure S5 for additional data. Source data is available for this figure in the Supplementary Information.

Source data for Figure 5C ^{(31.5KB, xls)}