The influence of drug dosing regimen on extinction and adaptation during experimental evolution in Candida albicans

Fluconazole dosing regimen in Candida albicans strongly shapes extinction, with extinction rate rising sharply from low to high drug concentration specifically under 24 h transfers.

• Why it matters: Extinction propensity during fungistatic treatment is poorly quantified, even though prior work suggests drug concentration and strain background can alter adaptation trajectories.
• What they did: A fully factorial set of short in vitro evolution experiments varied fluconazole concentration and transfer duration, tracking survival after 48 h and 72 h transfers and measuring tolerance, resistance, growth, cross-azole phenotypes, and genome size changes.
• The result: All replicates survived 48 h and 72 h transfers, while tolerance increases were frequent across regimens; resistance and growth rate tended to decrease at higher concentrations, and cross-tolerance rose with cross-resistance decreasing.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.