@article{665,
  abstract     = {The molecular mechanisms underlying phenotypic variation in isogenic bacterial populations remain poorly understood.We report that AcrAB-TolC, the main multidrug efflux pump of Escherichia coli, exhibits a strong partitioning bias for old cell poles by a segregation mechanism that is mediated by ternary AcrAB-TolC complex formation. Mother cells inheriting old poles are phenotypically distinct and display increased drug efflux activity relative to daughters. Consequently, we find systematic and long-lived growth differences between mother and daughter cells in the presence of subinhibitory drug concentrations. A simple model for biased partitioning predicts a population structure of long-lived and highly heterogeneous phenotypes. This straightforward mechanism of generating sustained growth rate differences at subinhibitory antibiotic concentrations has implications for understanding the emergence of multidrug resistance in bacteria.},
  author       = {Bergmiller, Tobias and Andersson, Anna M and Tomasek, Kathrin and Balleza, Enrique and Kiviet, Daniel and Hauschild, Robert and Tkacik, Gasper and Guet, Calin C},
  issn         = {0036-8075},
  journal      = {Science},
  number       = {6335},
  pages        = {311 -- 315},
  publisher    = {American Association for the Advancement of Science},
  title        = {{Biased partitioning of the multidrug efflux pump AcrAB TolC underlies long lived phenotypic heterogeneity}},
  doi          = {10.1126/science.aaf4762},
  volume       = {356},
  year         = {2017},
}