Simulating the Influence of Conjugative Plasmids Kinetic Values on the Multilevel Dynamics of Antimicrobial Resistance in a Membrane Computing Model

AbstractPlasmids harboring antibiotic resistance genes differ in their kinetic values as plasmid conjugation rate, segregation rate by incompatibility with related plasmids, rate of stochastic loss during replication, cost reducing the host-cell fitness, and frequency of compensatory mutations to reduce plasmid cost, depending on the cell mutation frequency. How variation in these values influence the success of a plasmid and their resistance genes in complex ecosystems, as the microbiota? Genes are located in plasmids, plasmids in cells, cells in populations. These populations are embedded in ensembles of species in different human hosts, are able to exchange between them bacterial ensembl…