Phenotypic plasticity of antibiotic resistance, metabolism byproduct utilization and the evolution of mutually beneficial cooperation in Escherichia coli

Although tag-based donation and recognition have well explained how the cooperative individuals are positively assorted if the cooperative individuals possess some signals and are also able to detect such signals, an additional mechanism is required to explain why some individuals pay the costs of evolving such a tag that may not be rewarded subsequently, and how such tag-based cooperative individuals will meet other similar individuals with a very low mutation rate. Here, we show that many and even all Escherichia coli bacteria cells in the increased antibiotic concentration will plastically evolve to be antibiotic resistant individuals who could protect antibiotic sensitive strain from the attack of antibiotics, and the antibiotic resistant strain could reversibly evolve to be antibiotic sensitive in non-antibiotic supplement medium but in a harsher environment with low glucose. A further experiment showed that antibiotic-sensitive E. coli strain could in turn help reduce the concentr..., , , # Data from: Phenotypic plasticity of antibiotic resistance, metabolism byproduct utilization and the evolution of mutually beneficial cooperation in Escherichia coli

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fqz612jvc](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fqz612jvc)

\* File name: README.md

\* Authors: Nan Ye

\* Other contributors: Beibei Hou, Jianxiao Song, Derek W Dunn, Zhanshan (Sam) Ma, Rui-Wu Wang

## Description of the data and file structure

Details for: Data.xlsx

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\* Description: a comma-delimited file containing population densities, intra- and extracellular indole concentrations, and relative gene expression levels for all Escherichia coli in the study.

\* Format(s): .xlsx

\* Size(s): 49.6 KB

Details for: Data.xlsx__Figure1

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*methods:

A total of 5 µl of overnight E. coli-S culture (OD600 ~ 1.0), grown from a single colony, was inoculated to 5 mL LB liquid mediums at a norfloxacin concentration of either...