Biological cost or metabolic price is a measure of the increased energy metabolism required to achieve a function.
Drug resistance has a high metabolic price in pathogens for which this concept is relevant (bacteria, endoparasites, and tumor cells.) In viruses, an equivalent "cost" is genomic complexity.
Read more about this topic: Drug Resistance
Famous quotes containing the word price:
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8,000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)