Bacterial drug tolerance under clinical conditions is governed by anaerobic adaptation but not anaerobic respiration.

Noninherited antibiotic resistance is a phenomenon whereby a subpopulation of genetically identical bacteria displays phenotypic tolerance to antibiotics. We show here that compared to Escherichia coli, the clinically relevant genus Burkholderia displays much higher levels of cells that tolerate ceftazidime. By measuring the dynamics of the formation of drug-tolerant cells under conditions that mimic in vivo infections, we show that in Burkholderia bacteria, oxygen levels affect the formation of these cells.

Evolving sensitivity balances Boolean Networks.

We investigate the sensitivity of Boolean Networks (BNs) to mutations. We are interested in Boolean Networks as a model of Gene Regulatory Networks (GRNs). We adopt Ribeiro and Kauffman's Ergodic Set and use it to study the long term dynamics of a BN.

Functionality and metagraph disintegration in boolean networks.

We study regulatory networks of N genes giving rise to a vector expression profile v(t) in which each gene is Boolean; either on or off at any time. We require a network to produce a particular time sequence v(t) for t∈1,…,T and parameterize the complexity of such a genetic function by its duration T. We establish a number of new results regarding how functional complexity constrains genetic regulatory networks and their evolution.