The Center for Studies in Physics and Biology and Laboratory of Microbiology at Cornell in Ithaca is doing something revolutionary. They’ve tracked the evolution of a Staphylococcus aureus bacterial infection by periodically isolating it from the subjects body and fully sequencing its genome as they administer antibiotic treatment. They found 35 mutations as the bacteria’s resistance rose throughout the experiment.
From the abstract of the paper published in Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences:
The spread of multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains in the clinical environment has begun to pose serious limits to treatment options. Yet virtually nothing is known about how resistance traits are acquired in vivo. Here, we apply the power of whole-genome sequencing to identify steps in the evolution of multidrug resistance in isogenic S. aureus isolates recovered periodically from the bloodstream of a patient undergoing chemotherapy with vancomycin and other antibiotics. After extensive therapy, the bacterium developed resistance, and treatment failed.
