Dr. Qingyun Liu (Assistant Professor) et al. published a paper in Trends in Genetics titled “Heterogeneity in microbial antibiotic responses: Genetic basis and within-host evolution”.
The paper presents a conceptual framework for understanding heterogeneity in bacterial responses to antibiotics, integrating phenomena such as tolerance, persistence, heteroresistance, and resilience from an evolutionary perspective. This review synthesizes insights from population genomics, clinical observations, and experimental studies to highlight how within-host evolution shapes diverse antibiotic response phenotypes. The authors further discuss the implications of this heterogeneity for drug resistance and treatment outcomes, emphasizing the need to incorporate evolutionary dynamics into the design of diagnostics and therapeutic strategies.