How did bacteria learn to fight antibiotics?

The emergence of all drug-resistant viruses has actually made people think of a dark future called antibiotic resistance. So? Why is it so dangerous, try to find out!

Antibiotic resistance is a phenomenon that occurs when germs or bacteria are not destroyed by antibiotics. They not only exist but also reproduce new generations of bacteria, also have resistance to chemicals and chemicals to treat infections.

According to the " Antimicrobial Resistance Assessment Program " funded by the British government, there are 700,000 deaths by drug-resistant bacteria annually. It is estimated that the number will increase to 10 million by 2050.

So how did the bacteria fight against the drugs that were once considered the medicine of western medicine and created a nightmare for humans? Let's find out.

How are bacteria resistant to drugs?

How antibiotics work

Antibiotics work to fight pathogenic bacteria. They are unicellular organisms that are a few thousandths of a millimeter in size, living and causing inflammation somewhere in our bodies. When introduced into the body, antibiotics will approach and kill pathogenic bacteria according to the main mechanisms :

1. Direct attack on the cell walls, causing them to lose their ability to protect themselves from the environment
2. Interferes with protein synthesis
3. Devastating metabolic processes
4. Prevent the synthesis of DNA and RNA

When a bacterium is resistant, they are able to neutralize part or all of these antibiotic mechanisms in the following ways:

Build defense system

When you don't want to meet someone, you avoid them, block phone numbers and any other forms of communication. Drug-resistant bacteria use a similar strategy for antibiotics. They change the permeability of cell membranes . In this way, it is completely or completely prevented to allow antibiotic intrusion into the cell to destroy their organization.

Another bacterial strategy is that they allow antibiotics to enter. But it will create some molecules like the door guard. They are ready to expel antibiotics from the cell as soon as they enter. Some bacteria use pumps, taking ATP energy to shoot antibiotics out of their bodies.

Camouflage target

Many antibiotics work by selecting a specific target of bacteria, such as their protein production unit. After that, the antibiotic that isolates this part makes the bacteria unable to use it and dies because of a lack of protein supply.

In response to this development, bacteria change the structure of the target parts so that the antibiotic no longer recognizes it. Basically, even if antibiotics get into cells, it doesn't know what to do when the targets are disguised and unrecognizable.

React to antibiotics

This is the most extreme antibiotic resistance strategy. Instead of just using defensive and camouflage systems, bacteria produce some enzymes to fight directly with their enemies. They reduce or completely undermine the antibacterial properties of the drug. For example, the beta-lactamse enzyme produced by some bacteria completely defeated penicillin.

Among millions of bacteria, there are individuals with natural antibiotic resistance.

All of these tactics are very subtle, but how can bacteria learn this?

In fact, the army of bacteria is very large and not every one is the same. However, antibiotic molecules are identical, they do not reach diversity like bacteria. Of the millions of bacteria, there are likely to be some natural individuals that can use one of these three strategies to resist the drug.

When antibiotics kill all drug-susceptible bacteria, drug-resistant bacteria continue to exist and reproduce . Their next generation will replace the dead bacteria and they are completely resistant to the drug.

In another scenario, bacteria can learn these strategies by passing each other the DNA code . Which contains a way to disguise an organism or create enzymes against antibiotics.

A common bacterium can receive this coding gene through many ways. For example, during transformation, they receive bare DNA from another bacterium. Or when a drug-resistant bacterium dies and explodes, they release DNA fragments into the environment. Other bacteria will " pick up " them and recreate resistant genes.

The process of antibiotic-resistant bacteria exists and develops into populations.

Unfortunately, even if bacteria learn how to resist drugs in any way, they will pass on this ability to the next generation. It is a fundamental consequence of the natural selection idea in Darwin's evolutionary theory called " the best adaptation of survival ."

The end result is that we must fight a population of resistant bacteria, from generation to generation. Pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to develop new antibiotics, because every few years resistant bacteria begin to appear.

However, it is not so that humans will lose in this war. Currently, we have about 100 different antibiotics. Understanding the mechanism of bacterial resistance, scientists will continue to develop new antibiotics on the one hand. On the other hand, they are also looking for ways to kill " greasy " bacteria, such as using nanotechnology that promises to take mankind out of the nightmare of antibiotic resistance.