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Updated: Aug 12, 2026

Design and Use of a Low Cost, Automated Morbidostat for Adaptive Evolution of Bacteria Under Antibiotic Drug Selection
Published on: September 27, 2016
Phenotypic conversion of drug-resistant bacteria to drug sensitivity
C Guerrier-Takada1, R Salavati, S Altman
1Department of Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
Abstract:
Plasmids that contain synthetic genes coding for small oligoribonucleotides called external guide sequences (EGSs) have been introduced into strains of Escherichia coli harboring antibiotic resistance genes. The EGSs direct RNase P to cleave the mRNAs transcribed from these genes thereby converting the phenotype of drug-resistant cells to drug sensitivity. Increasing the EGS-to-target mRNA ratio by changing gene copy number or the number of EGSs complementary to different target sites enhances the efficiency of the conversion process. We demonstrate a general method for the efficient phenotypic conversion of drug-resistant bacterial cultures.
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