Fig. 5: Properties of spontaneously emerging AS cells determine the persistence of slower-growing AR cells.

a, b Representative individual-based computational simulations of strain AR (magenta) in the a absence or b presence of phage lysis with different fitness costs of antibiotic resistance and probabilities of losing antibiotic resistance. If AR cells undergo genetic changes that cause them to lose antibiotic resistance, such as the segregational loss of a plasmid, they are relieved of the fitness cost and become AS cells (gray). The images are the outputs at the last simulation time step. c The proportions of AR cells as a function of the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance and the probability of losing antibiotic resistance for different rates of phage lysis. Each data point is an independent simulation (n = 4), the black data points are in the absence of phage, and the green data points are in the presence of phage. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.