Bacteria acquire novel DNA through horizontal gene transfer (HGT), a process that enables
an organism to rapidly adapt to changing environmental conditions, provides a competitive …

Antibiotics are powerful drugs used in the treatment of bacterial infections. The inappropriate
use of these medicines has driven the dissemination of antibiotic resistance (AR) in most …

Plasmids play an important role in bacterial genome evolution by transferring genes
between lineages. Fitness costs associated with plasmid carriage are expected to be a …

The'plasmid paradox'arises because, although plasmids are common features of bacterial
genomes, theoretically they should not exist: rates of conjugation were believed insufficient …

Antibiotic resistance tends to carry fitness costs, making it difficult to understand how
resistance can be maintained in the absence of continual antibiotic exposure. Here we …

With plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance thriving and threatening to become a serious
public health problem, it is paramount to increase our understanding of the forces that …

Plasmids, extrachromosomal DNA molecules commonly found in bacterial and archaeal
cells, play an important role in bacterial genetics and evolution. Our understanding of …

It is difficult to understand plasmid maintenance in the absence of selection and theoretical
models predict the conditions for plasmid persistence to be limited. Plasmid-associated …

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the greatest public health challenges we are
currently facing. To develop effective interventions against this, it is essential to understand …

This review discusses the fate of antimicrobial resistance and virulence genes frequently
present among microbiomes. A central concept in epidemiology is the mean number of …