The dangers of antibiotic overuse have become increasingly clear in recent decades. Excessive use accelerates the evolution of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, raising the alarming prospect of infections that no longer respond to existing drugs and pose a serious threat to public health.
Against this backdrop, Prof. Roy Kishony and Dr. Idan Yelin in the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Biology have published a study in Nature Microbiology revealing a previously unknown rapid pathway that bacteria use to develop antibiotic resistance.
The newly identified mechanism is based on an “inflation” in the number of copies of specific genes that provide bacteria with a survival advantage, including resistance to antibiotics. The discovery was made using AmpliFinder, a new computational tool developed by the researchers, which they used to analyze more than 10,000 laboratory-evolved bacterial samples.
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