Having your cake and eating it – Staphylococcus aureus small colony variants can evolve faster growth rate without losing their antibiotic resistance

August 1, 2017

This article comments on work published by Cao et al. (mBio, 2027), which shows that Staphylococcus aureus can produce small colony variants (SCVs) that are challenging to detect and lead to persistent infections due to mutations affecting respiration and ATP production, with recent findings indicating various evolutionary paths for SCVs to increase growth rate while maintaining antibiotic resistance, suggesting greater adaptability and clinical challenge.