Week9a+KEY+to+Bacteria+Resistance

Question 1: **Why do drug-resistance bacteria develop more effectively in hospitals?** //Here are some typical students answers from your responses:// "They develop in Hospitals more easily because they use alot of antibacterial, soap or liquids. So the bacteria has time to evolve and become resistant....Also some patients do not finish their antibiotics which leads to bacteria that is resistant to them to enter the hospital."

"Drug resistant bacteria can develop better in hospitals because people who have an illness can have their immune system down and the bacteria being treated in them could die but the stronger bacteria will survive and reproduce and can infect other people in a hospital"

"The bacteria becomes resistant because of the overuse of the antibiotics. They reproduce more drug-resistant bacteria."

"..Because in a hospital, patients are given so many drugs and medication that by the time they get the correct drug, it has set off some sort oof reaction in the body causing it to be resistant." [|Per2LauraMacias]: "Drug-resistance bacteria develop more effectively in hospitals because doctors overprescribe antibiotics. Bacteria, like every other organism evolves in order to survive, and since hospitals have so many antibiotics, __mutations in the bacteria allow the bacteria to become drug resistant, and thrive even with the antibiotics__." //Laura, do you mean that resistance develops in response to the drugs toi begin with?//

[|Per1OscarH] "Bacteria become immune to antibiotics, specially in Hospitals because when the antibiotics are used frequently in a patient. This __bacteria can develop defenses to repel the antibiotics__. This defenses can include enzymes to break them down." [|Per2SpencerN] "....Some of the bacteria are resistant to these antibiotics, allowing them to rapidly multiply. In hospitals these bacteria develop more rapidly because patients are treated with __antibiotics that kill the non resistant bacteria and leave the resistant bacteria to grow in number__." [|Per6RosaR] "Drug-resistant bacteria develop more effectively in hospitals because the infections are treated with antibiotics which __increased the frequency of alleles for resistance to antibiotics in the hospital."__

[|Per2LouisaCh] Antibiotics kill less resistant bacteria, but more resistant bacteria survive and reproduce. The genes that make them resistant are passed on to their offspring. __Bacteria reproduce fast__.

[|viviana_avila] They develop more because the patients are prescribed a certain amount of antibiotics which is sometimes too much or to little to fight the infection.In addition some patients might stop drinking the antibiotics or not fully drink the correct amount of antibiotics causing only part of the bacteria to be killed and __the left over (surviving ) bacteria multiplies and becomes resistant to the antibiotics__.


 * PUTTING THESE TOGETHER: In hospitals there is an abundance of antibiotics, which kill the non-resistant bacteria, and give an advantage to the few mutant bacteria that happen to have a resistance to the drugs. I would add, that without the exposure to the drugs, that is, outside the hospital, the mutants are outnumbered and outcompeted by the other, non-resistant strains.**
 * The issue of not finishing the entire perscription is another problem of not completing to kill the bacteria that are perhaps not resistant to the drugs, but that were left behind nevertheless.**

Question 2: **Where did the first drug-resistant bacteria come from? (beware: Blue, not Red!)** //Some wrong answers (can you see why?):// "The first drug resistant came from by Alexander Fleming in 1928" "The first was penicillin." "The first drug resistant bacteria came shortly after the discovery of penicillin, most likely from a mutation allowing it not to be affected. "The drug-resistant bacteria came from the antibiotics themselves which then get passed on through the genes."

[|Per1EmilyC] It's a __GOOD mutation in the DNA__. For the bacteria, but it helps it to evolve and to adapt to the medications, which is bad for us. [|Per2PatriciaC] A __bacteria happened to have the trait to fight drugs through a mutation__ or something else (it can't be sexual reproduction in this case since bacteria is asexual). Since it proved useful against antibiotics or drugs, it kept that trait. In turn, it survived more than the bacteria that wasn't drug resistant. The drug resistant bacteria then makes more offspring. This is how the first one came to be. [|Per2ChristinaM] The first drug-resistant bacteria __came from ordinary bacteria__. Some were born with random genetic mutations that caused them to survive better against antibiotics. The ones that survived reproduced and passed the resistant gene on to their offspring. Eventually, all the bacteria that wasn't resistant to antibiotics died and only the resistant survived. [|Per5FrancisF] Drug-resistant bacteria usually come form mutation by the __acceptance of a foreign DNA plasmid__, causing the bacteria to be resistant to said drug or resistant to a completely different antibiotic.
 * PUTTING THESE TOGETHER: Bacteria reproduce fast and therefore mutate rather fast. Some 'ordinary' bacteria happen to mutate to a drug resistant form. As mutants they are very rare in the population, but the presence of the mediciine all of a sudden gives them such an advantage that they take over.**

Question 3: **In natural selection, the key is competition amongst members of the same species. Suggest a strategy that might weaken the drug-resistant bacteria.**

"a strategy being used to weaken the drug resistant bacteria is to target the toxins that are beiing produced by the bacteria. With this, no selective pressure is created, allowing the bacteria to evolve very slowly." //Yes, but the problem is that the toxins are also changing all the time to a certain level. By the time we get rid of one tozin or resistance trick, another comes up.//

The best answer I so far found was this one: [|Per2JoseMuro] "**Maybe they can use different or varied antibiotics so that they don't become resistant**." Indeed, as we change the drugs all the time, we keep changing the selection pressure, So each time we are getting rid of the bacteria that were resistant to the previous drug.