Predicting the emergence of resistance to antifungal drugs

The emergence of antifungal drug resistance is inevitable. Here I discuss a ntibiotic resistance in the context of the adaptive potential of fungi and I propose an approach to predicting the evolution of antifungal resistance using experimental evolution of DNA sequences and microbial populations. Pr ediction is based on determination of evolutionary potential at two levels, the gene and the genome. At the level of the gene, evolutionary potential depends on the sequence space of candidate resistance genes defined by the fitness effects of all possible mutations in all possible combinations. At the level of the genome, evolutionary potential depends on the adaptive lan dscape defined by the fitness effects of all possible interactions among al leles constituting the genotype. (C) 2001 Federation of European Microbiolo gical Societies. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.