Bacteria in the lungs of people with cystic fibrosis (CF) adapt to this environment in multiple ways, resulting in a diverse bacterial community even within the same person. Roy Kishony at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and his colleagues sequenced multiple isolates of Burkholderia dolosa from the lungs of five patients with CF. Genes involved in antibiotic resistance and scavenging iron (a limiting nutrient) showed signs of adaptation. Individual patients harboured microbes with a variety of adaptive mutations in these genes.
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