Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Cells, Microbes & Viruses => Topic started by: thedoc on 31/08/2011 22:03:43

Title: Is antibiotic resistance a recent phenomenon?
Post by: thedoc on 31/08/2011 22:03:43

Bacterial antibiotic resistance genes have been discovered in soil frozen for over 30,000 years, Canadian scientists have shown.

Read the whole story on our  website by clicking here (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/news/news/2358/)

  

Title: Is antibiotic resistance a recent phenomenon?
Post by: CliffordK on 23/09/2011 23:40:14

Quote from: From Above

This is because, after all, the antibiotics we use in hospitals today are largely "borrowed" from other microbes, which normally make these chemicals to protect themselves. Naturally, other bugs have evolved defense measures in the form of resistance genes.

Very interesting article.

I'm not surprised that something like Penicillin resistance would be very old as Penicillin would be derived from the great battle between bacteria and molds.  I was a bit surprised to read about the Vancomycin resistance gene, but as mentioned, many of our modern drugs are improved versions of naturally occurring compounds.

While bacteria can reproduce with asexual reproduction, they are also able to pick up genetic material from the environment, as well as sharing genetic material using plasmids allowing dissimilar bacteria to share "useful" genes.

Title: Is antibiotic resistance a recent phenomenon?
Post by: The Penguin on 18/10/2011 19:56:17

As long as antibodies are available, bacteria will evolve to evade them.