Subpopulations in Strains of Staphylococcus aureus Provide Antibiotic Tolerance.

The ability of to colonise different niches across the human body is linked to an adaptable metabolic capability, as well as its ability to persist within specific tissues despite adverse conditions. In many cases, as proliferates within an anatomical niche, there is an associated pathology. The immune response, together with medical interventions such as antibiotics, often removes the cells that are causing this disease. However, a common issue in infections is a relapse of disease. Within infected tissue, exists as a population of cells, and it adopts a diversity of cell types. In evolutionary biology, the concept of "bet-hedging" has established that even in positive conditions, there are members that arise within a population that would be present as non-beneficial, but if those conditions change, these traits could allow survival. For , some of these cells within an infection have a reduced fitness, are not rapidly proliferating or are the cause of an active host response and disease, but these do remain even after the disease seems to have been cleared. This is true for persistence against immune responses but also as a continual presence in spite of antibiotic treatment. We propose that the constant arousal of suboptimal populations at any timepoint is a key strategy for long-term infection and survival. Thus, understanding the molecular basis for this feature could be instrumental to combat persistent infections.