@article{666,
  abstract     = {Antibiotics elicit drastic changes in microbial gene expression, including the induction of stress response genes. While certain stress responses are known to “cross-protect” bacteria from other stressors, it is unclear whether cellular responses to antibiotics have a similar protective role. By measuring the genome-wide transcriptional response dynamics of Escherichia coli to four antibiotics, we found that trimethoprim induces a rapid acid stress response that protects bacteria from subsequent exposure to acid. Combining microfluidics with time-lapse imaging to monitor survival and acid stress response in single cells revealed that the noisy expression of the acid resistance operon gadBC correlates with single-cell survival. Cells with higher gadBC expression following trimethoprim maintain higher intracellular pH and survive the acid stress longer. The seemingly random single-cell survival under acid stress can therefore be predicted from gadBC expression and rationalized in terms of GadB/C molecular function. Overall, we provide a roadmap for identifying the molecular mechanisms of single-cell cross-protection between antibiotics and other stressors.},
  author       = {Mitosch, Karin and Rieckh, Georg and Bollenbach, Tobias},
  issn         = {24054712},
  journal      = {Cell Systems},
  number       = {4},
  pages        = {393 -- 403},
  publisher    = {Cell Press},
  title        = {{Noisy response to antibiotic stress predicts subsequent single cell survival in an acidic environment}},
  doi          = {10.1016/j.cels.2017.03.001},
  volume       = {4},
  year         = {2017},
}