E. coli strain isolated after evolution of low-level pesticides and streptomycin exposure

The widespread use of streptomycin has raised major concerns about the evolution of antibiotic resistance in the environment. Our previous study showed that co-exposure to environmentally relevant levels of pesticides and streptomycin drives E. coli toward high-level streptomycin resistance. Here, we investigated the underlying molecular mechanisms and found that ribosomal mutations interacted epistatically to produce resistance far exceeding the effects of individual mutations.