By: James Maynard
Published: January 8th, 2015 8:09 am
Summary:
Scientists in the pharmaceutical field have recently discovered a
new antibiotic that could help fight superbugs: bacteria that have become
resistant to antibiotics. Antibiotics are medicines that kill or slow the growth of bacteria. Since penicillin was first discovered by a scientist
as a way to kill bacteria, it had been used throughout the world to help people
fight diseases and infections. However, certain types of bacteria evolved over
time to penicillin and other drugs. It was then useless to fight bacteria that
were already resistant with antibiotics. Now with the discovery of Texiobactin,
bacteria that have become immune to antibiotics can now be killed. This is a
leading breakthrough, because "Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus" a form of staph infection has become immune to the antibiotic and
causes many people to fall terribly ill. Texiobactin prevents the cell walls of
bacteria from forming by binding on two types of lipids. When the Texibactim
attaches to the cell wall, it tears the wall. After this, the bacteria will
die. Finding alternative antibiotics can become difficult, because if some bacteria were to survive after the antibiotic was applied, then the antibiotic is useless. It becomes harder to find new antibiotics, because a lot of them have caused antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and there are limited amounts of antibiotics.
Relevance:
This article is mostly relevant to unit 6 (the current unit.) It talks about antibiotics which in 14.5. In the reading, it talks about what antibiotics are and how bacteria has evolved in such a way that it has become resistant to antibiotic. The implications this has on people fighting against life threatening infections like tuberculosis is serious since certain strains have adapted to be resistance all antibiotics. It also relates to 14.1 where natural selection comes into place. When the a certain strain of bacteria is presented with a drug, the bacteria which can tolerate it will be more suitable to the environment than other ones. It would then pass on this trait to its offspring and eventually the strain would become immune.
How does the antibiotic Texiobactin differ from other antibiotics?
ReplyDeleteGood Question
DeleteMost antibiotics are not able to fight superbugs.These are organisms that have become immune/tolerant to the antibiotics administered by doctors. A lot of antibiotics are not meant to kill superbugs, instead, they are supposed to kill "normal" (infections not resistant to antibiotics) infections. On the other hand Texiobactin is similar to other antibiotics, because there are other medicines in circulation which are supposed to fight super bugs like Texiobactin.
Hope that makes it clear
If bacteria possibly becomes resistant to the Texiobactin antibiotic, will scientists have to come up with a new antibiotic that kills/slows the bacterial process?
ReplyDeleteI would have to say a 100% YES.
ReplyDeleteScientists would have to come up with an another type of antibiotic because how else are doctors suppose to save lives of people infected with disease. One thing that I want to make clear is that the antibiotic Texiobactin might be modified in the future to fight infections that are already resistant to it, however I am uncertain that this will be the path that scientists take. The path that they'll most likely take would be to find another type of bacteria which could produce an enzyme or protein which could kill the infection. Again this is the future, but there is going to be another antibiotic developed so that people don't die of disease.