Researchers at Harvard Medical School used a giant petri dish device (the 'MEGA-plate') with increasing antibiotic gradients to film E. coli evolving resistance to a 1,000-times-lethal dose of the antibiotic trimethoprim in about 10 days (roughly 240 hours) — the fastest and most visually documented real-time observation of antibiotic resistance evolution under laboratory conditions.
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Researchers at Harvard Medical School used a giant petri dish device (the 'MEGA-plate') with increasing antibiotic gradients to film E. coli evolving resistance to a 1,000-times-lethal dose of the antibiotic trimethoprim in about 10 days (roughly 240 hours) — the fastest and most visually documented real-time observation of antibiotic resistance evolution under laboratory conditions.
The shortest time documented in a controlled laboratory experiment for a bacterial population to evolve resistance to a 1000-fold increase in antibiotic concentration, as tracked by direct video observation.
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Permanent ID limitsregistry.com/limits/LR-FASTEST-EVOLVED-ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANCE-LAB
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Limits Registry. LR-FASTEST-EVOLVED-ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANCE-LAB. Fastest laboratory-observed evolution of high-level bacterial antibiotic resistance. 2026.