Fig. 1

MIC and relative fitness of adapted lines after the laboratory evolution. a Relative resistance level in laboratory evolved E. coli K-12 BW2511 lines exposed to one of each 14 AMPs (blue) or 12 antibiotics (red), respectively (at least 9 parallel-evolved lines per drug). Altogether, lines exposed to AMPs (N = 138) developed significantly lower resistance, than lines exposed to antibiotics (N = 120) (P < 0.0001, one-sided permutation test). The resistance levels reached were more heterogeneous across AMP treatments (N = 14) than across antibiotic treatments (N = 12) (P = 0.03478 F-test). Each data point represents the MIC fold change of one of each parallel-evolved line. The mutD5 mutator strain exposed to TPII is marked by an asterisk (*). b Relative resistance level after laboratory evolution in clinical isolates under TPII or PXB stresses, respectively. Evolved lines exposed to TPII reached significantly lower resistance level than lines exposed to PXB (*** indicate the significant difference at least P-value = 1.65 × 10^–4, two-sided Mann–Whitney test, N = 10 each group). Each data point represents the MIC fold change of one of each parallel-evolved line. c Relative fitness of 60 antibiotic-resistant and 38 AMP-resistant lines displaying at least twofold increments in resistance level to the drug indicated. Fitness was measured as the area under the growth curve in an antibacterial agent-free medium and was normalized to that of the wild-type (gray color). Throughout Fig. 1, boxplots show the median, first and third quartiles, with whiskers showing the 5th and 95th percentile. For AMP and antibiotic abbreviations, see Supplementary Tables 1–2. Data in this figure are representative of at least two biological replicates. Source data are provided as a Source Data file