Bacterial strains that are grown in enriched culture without antibiotics can "lose" their plasmids. Why/how could this happen?
Bacterial strains that are grown in enriched culture without antibiotics can "lose" their plasmids.This might be because of the reason that in the enriched culture there is no selective agent i.e antibiotics against which the antibiotic resistant genes needs to be expressed.So, bacteria grow in colonies much more in enriched culture without antibiotics.Also,in the process of their division, as there is no selective agent, it might so happen that the resistant bacteria could lose their resistance genes(as they were devoid of a specific antibiotic for a specific time period)and lose their plasmids which is known as plamid loss.The plasmids finally become non existent in the bacterial population.
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