Systematic in vitro evolution in reveals key determinants of drug resistance.

Science (New York, N.Y.)
Authors
Abstract

Surveillance of drug resistance and the discovery of novel targets-key objectives in the fight against malaria-rely on identifying resistance-conferring mutations in parasites. Current approaches, while successful, require laborious experimentation or large sample sizes. To elucidate shared determinants of antimalarial resistance that can empower in silico inference, we examined the genomes of 724 clones, each selected in vitro for resistance to one of 118 compounds. We identified 1448 variants in 128 recurrently mutated genes, including drivers of antimalarial multidrug resistance. In contrast to naturally occurring variants, those selected in vitro are more likely to be missense or frameshift, involve bulky substitutions, and occur in conserved, ordered protein domains. Collectively, our dataset reveals mutation features that predict drug resistance in eukaryotic pathogens.

Year of Publication
2024
Journal
Science (New York, N.Y.)
Volume
386
Issue
6725
Pages
eadk9893
Date Published
11/2024
ISSN
1095-9203
DOI
10.1126/science.adk9893
PubMed ID
39607932
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