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closeOr resistance?
Posted by ribonux on 23 Mar 2007 at 16:59 GMT
rRNA modification mutants show sensitivity to translation inhibitors
http://plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000174#article1.body1.sec2.sec1.p1
The table and the drop test shows that of the 9 knockout strains, only 2 shows sensitivity to sparsomycin and only one is sensitive to anisomycin. Shouldn't the general conclusion then be the other way around, i.e. that removal of these rRNA modifications generally result to antibiotic resistance?
RE: Or resistance?
dinman replied to ribonux on 30 Mar 2007 at 17:08 GMT
No, this conclusion is incorrect. The important comparison is with the isogenic wild-type controls. By this comparison, none of the mutants confer greater levels of resistance to either of these two drugs.
Instead, what we see is that three of the mutants are hypersensitive to drugs. This is consistent with the notion that impariment of a function that is normally found in wild-type ribsomes potentiates the activity of these drugs.
RE: RE: Or resistance?
ribonux replied to dinman on 03 Apr 2007 at 21:40 GMT
Yes, you're right. I stand corrected! For some reason, I hastily equated no effect with resistance.
Anyway, I think I was reacting more to the figure/section heading which at first glance seems to imply that the general behaviour of modification mutants is toward antibiotic sensitivity, when in fact majority didn't show any phenotype. Interesting result nevertheless.
RE: RE: RE: Or resistance?
dinman replied to ribonux on 09 Apr 2007 at 23:41 GMT
What I truly like about the PLoS ONE concept is that the manuscript is a living document. No paper is perfect, and many the times I've found small errors and imprecise language in my papers months and even years after publication with no way to correct them. Here, you've rightly pointed out that the figure/section heading was ambiguous: this forum allows such problems to be corrected. Thanks!