Objective: Gaining resistance to antibiotics is a major public health problem. However, our knowledge of the long-term effects of exposure to antibiotics, particularly on bacteria, and the role of this in the acquisition of antibiotic resistance remains limited. Although the use of antibiotics is known to increase the rate of mutation in bacteria, the spectrum of spontaneous mutations and the effect of increasing antibiotic resistance is not certain.

Method: In this study, mutation accumulation and next generation whole genome sequencing techniques were used to investigate the effect of long-term low dose streptomycin on spontaneous mutation rate and spectrum in Klebsiella aerogenes.

Results: The results confirm that streptomycin antibiotic increases the rate of mutation in Klebsiella aerogenes bacteria.

Conclusion: With this study, it has been shown that antibiotics not only cause a selective difficulty for bacteria to or not to become the target of the antibiotic, but also increase the rate of mutations that will be beneficial for the bacteria and accelerate the adaptation of the bacteria.