Comments on: Bacteria: resisting antibiotics since at least 30,000 BC

By: vince

vince — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 16:49:12 +0000

“Possibly a viable approach is to engineer an antibiotic that does not have it’s origins in the biological world. Without an existing set of genes to deploy against such an antibiotic, resistance would be much more difficult to evolve.”

example. google nylon eating bacteria. nylon is not found in nature

By: Will

Will — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 15:44:21 +0000

These resistant microbes have time and again been shown to be living happily in our guts, noses and other tissues without making us sick. The trouble comes when we are exposed to medicines and toxins which kill off our beneficial bacteria, the billions of absolutely necessary good bacteria that inhabit our bodies which protect our systems from the overgrowth of these potentially harmful microbes. It is a war over real estate which modern medicines and poor diet tilts in the wrong direction which is causing sickness.

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:34:10 +0000

Possibly a viable approach is to engineer an antibiotic that does not have it’s origins in the biological world. Without an existing set of genes to deploy against such an antibiotic, resistance would be much more difficult to evolve.

However bacteria have short lives and huge numbers. This gives their species nearly endless opportunities to reshape themselves against the threat of antibiotics. I would never bet against their abilities to develop resistance, not in the long run.

By: Arwen from the Chameleon's Tongue

Arwen from the Chameleon's Tongue — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 07:06:38 +0000

I like their thorough approach to avoiding contamination. And it’s cute to have your DNA contaminated with wooly mammoth!

By: One Furious Llama

One Furious Llama — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:06:10 +0000

Lies! The world was only created 6,000 years ago!

Ehm, sorry about that. Lost my mind for a minute there.

But seriously, how would you go about avoiding the really nasty bacteria who happen to be very drug resistant or is it essentially a lottery? It’s a pretty unfortunate thing if you get infected by a bug resistant to many drugs and you only find out when nothing works.

What is done when no drugs work? Hack off limbs and then death?

Nature is awesome… but cruel as hell (if it existed, that is)…

By: Romeo Vitelli

Romeo Vitelli — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:38:27 +0000

One of the biggest modern problems involves bacteria being introduced into new ecosystems where they never existed before. As bacteria move into new settings, the old evolutionary balance gets disrupted and organisms with resistance to existing bacteria get infected by the new bacteria.