Resistance to bacteriophage incurs a cost to virulence in drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii

Introduction: Acinetobacter baumannii is a critical priority pathogen (World Health Organisation) because of the rise in nosocomial infections and its ability to evolve resistance to last resort antibiotics, which makes A. baumannii a priority target for phage therapy. Two strains of a novel, lytic bacteriophage (LemonAid and Tonic) able to infect carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii (strain NCTC 13420), were isolated from environmental water samples collected through a citizen science program.
Methods: In vitro and in vivo assays, genomics and microscopy techniques were used to characterise the phages, determine mechanisms of phage resistance and the efficacy of the phages against A. baumannii.
Results: A. baumannii developed resistance to both viruses, LemonAid and Tonic. Resistance came at a cost to virulence, with the resistant variants causing significantly reduced mortality in a Galleria mellonella larval in vivo model. A replicated 8bp insertion increased in frequency (~40% higher f..., , , # Resistance to bacteriophage incurs a cost to virulence in drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4j0zpc8jt](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4j0zpc8jt)

## Description of the data and file structure

There are 11 dataset provided here that were used in the analysis and production of figures for the manuscript entitled 'Resistance to bacteriophage incurs a cost to virulence in drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. The dataset can be split into three sections:

The first section relates to the *in vitro* growth curve data (optical density recorded over 24 hours, across different treatments) and contains datasets 1-4. Two experiments were run in total: Experiment 1) *A. baumannii* wildtype was infected with different concentrations of phage (LemonAid and Tonic), the raw data for this is dataset 1. Area under the curve (AUC) and virulence was calculated from this dataset and these data are provided in dataset 2. Experiment 2) the growth curves of wildtype *A...