The development of antibiotics is a major advancement that people in todays society take for granted. Before antibiotics were around, there was practically no protection against deadly infectious diseases caused by bacterial pathogens, and now with antibiotics lives have been saved and extended. While this development is amazing, few realize that we are at the risk of loosing effective antibiotics due to growing resistance of pathogenic bacteria to antibiotics. Bacteria are able to attain antibiotic resistance via mutations that typically alter the cellular targets of antibiotics. Some of these bacteria that acquire resistance are then able to transfer these resistance genes to other bacteria with horizontal gene transfer via plasmids and bacteriophages. Antibiotic self-medication for symptoms such as a sore throat, easy access to antibiotics and stopping antibiotics once symptoms dissipate contribute to the increase of multi-drug resistant bacteria. Overall, this is dangerous, because as a society we are at risk of reverting to times before antibiotics were available, and we could have no protection against deadly pathogens and surgeries could be deadly. Thus, people should only take antibiotics when properly prescribed, and should follow all instructions when taking an antibiotic.
Are there Antibiotics in the meat we eat?
Antibiotics are not only used to combat infectious diseases caused by pathogens, but they’re surprisingly also used to make animals for food production gain weight. While this may be economically advantageous for the companies selling these animal products, this use of antibiotics has also contributed to increasing antibiotic resistance. Specifically, tetracyclines, sulphonamides, quinolones and penicillins are most commonly fed to animals for food production and are also some antibiotics with the highest resistance rates. Even when we purchase “antibiotic free” meat, this only means that the given animal wasn’t fed antibiotics in the last two weeks before it was being sold. Farm animals are typically given continuous small doses of antibiotics, which leads to continuous “selective pressure” between the bacteria in the given animal. The results in survival of the fittest amongst the bacteria (the fittest being the antibiotic resistant bacteria). This resistant bacteria can then pass their resistant genes onto other bacteria via horizontal gene transfer. These resistanct bacteria can then be passed to humans, because, the manure of the animals (which also contains antibiotics and antibiotic resistant bacteria) may then be used as fertilizer in products that will be sold to consumers. Thus, I think it is crucial that producers think of the consequence of feeding their animals antibiotics that should be carefully used, instead of being used recklessly which is contributing to antibiotic resistance.
Resistance of Klebsiella Pneumoniae
Klebsiella Pneumoniae is a bacterium that typically causes infections acquired in hospitals. A certain strain of Klebsiella Pneumoniae has grown resistant to carbapenem antibiotics, by loosing or changing their porins that carbapenem typically diffuse through to disrupt cell wall formation. This is one of several mechanisms that bacteria use to bypass antibiotics , they change or block access of the given drug to its desired target. The resistance of K. pneumoniae is particularly dangerous due to its larger correlation with hospital related infectious diseases, which can easily spread to healthcare workers and immunocompromised patients. In order to override this antibiotic resistant mechanism, light-activated molecular nanomachines have been used on K. pneumoniae in order to make K. pneumoniae resistant once more to carbapenem. The molecular nanomachines diffuse into the lipid bilayer and are able to essentially poke holes in the lipid bilayer when triggered by light. One default of this treatment is that the nanomachines are not selective, thus, they can damage and penetrate the lipid membranes of healthy cells. Despite this fact, I think this is a great and promising advancement given the exponential amount of bacteria that are growing antibiotic resistance and are becoming superbugs, which are bacteria that are resistant to essentially all antibiotics.
Dallis' Blog 