|
Title: bacterial resistance Post by: savcherry22 on Dec 28, 2012 Scientists are concerned that bacteria will be resistant to all antibiotics within the next decade. Using your knowledge of genetics, describe how bacterial populations can develop drug resistance.
Title: Re: bacterial resistance Post by: yocura on Dec 29, 2012 The fact is that some bacteria can indeed mutate and make themselves impervious to present-day drugs. And then we will have to do what we ALWAYS do, create new drugs that do work.
Science and disease are in a never ending race to win ! We did win against dreaded smallpox and scarlet fever and even syphilis and trachoma but recently (this year) we have lost against TUBERCULOSIS. The number of cases have doubled in Canada for example. The wonderful drugs that were developed following years of failure suddenly DO NOT WORK. However, there is ample funding and the labs are working feverishly to come up with a drug that can banish this dreadful bacteria. The saga of disease versus cure is a dreadful and exciting one. Perhaps the saddest case was the flue virus that followed World War 1. It killed 20 million before it died out on its own. Title: Re: bacterial resistance Post by: combatzn on Dec 29, 2012 You have a bacterial infection. You take antibiotics, which kill off the bacteria that are susceptible to the medicine you've taken. However, there are one or two wily little buggers that were not susceptible, perhaps due to some mutation. They live on, and proceed to re-populate your body with their offspring, which are also resistant to the medicine. In this way, they "develop" drug resistance; each time you take a new antibiotic, there's a chance that not all of the bacteria will be killed off.
|