Month: August 2011

Re-awakening enemy sleepers…

The idea of an enemy sleeper agent is a central plot device in many a spy novel or movie, and certainly the idea of going to ground behind enemy lines is not unheard of in many theatres of conflict. The idea in all cases is to remain undetected until re-activated to cause harm behind enemy defences.

The trick to identifying if there are latent sleepers operating is to try and re-activate them and get them to reveal themselves. Cue any number of spy stories about false radio signals or targets to lure sleepers into the open.

Curiously, it is a similar strategy that is being used in novel treatments for infections from two disparate areas of chemotherapy, one in the treatment of HIV and the other the treatment of persistent bacterial infections.

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Where I am quoted not quite correctly….

I was recently called by an editor at NewScientist asking for some background on the field of fitness in bacteria, and particularly the issue of multi-resistant bacteria persisting in the environment (or clinic) in the absence of antibiotic selection. The reason for the question arose due to the upcoming publishing of an interesting paper in PLoS Genetics:

Silva RF, Mendonça SCM, Carvalho LM, Reis AM, Gordo I, et al. 2011 Pervasive Sign Epistasis between Conjugative Plasmids and Drug-Resistance Chromosomal Mutations. PLoS Genet 7(7): e1002181. doi: “10.1371/journal.pgen.1002181 “:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1002181

Following this, I have been quoted in a NewScientist Health News item, and as I don’t feel my response is quite in the context I gave it, I thought I would give a more detailed account. I spoke to NewScientist last Wednesday (the paper in question wasn’t due to be published until the following day), but I was told that in the study the authors had observed that antibiotic resistance can have a positive effect on bacterial fitness, even in the absence of selection. I was asked whether this was a surprise to me, and more generally about research in bacterial fitness. What I perhaps should have done was ask specifically whether the paper was still embargoed and whether I could have more particulars of the study, because I could not have anticipated the particular nature of the study in question.

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