For many years, antibiotics have been effectively used to treat bacterial diseas
ID: 9238 • Letter: F
Question
For many years, antibiotics have been effectively used to treat bacterial disease; and pesticides have been used to protect our agricultural crops from many kinds of pests, including insects, worms (nematodes), fungi, or agricultural weeds, for example.
A growing concern for treating bacterial diseases or pest outbreaks is the evolution of antibiotic or pesticide resistance by bacterial or pest populations. Resistance means that a particular antibiotic is no longer effective in treating a disease, or that a particular pesticide will no longer prevent crop damage. This resistance can be viewed as evolution of a new trait at the population level, which is resistance to an antibiotic or to a pesticide. In this assignment, you will explore specific examples of antibiotic or pesticide resistance.
Assignment details:
After reading materials about evolution and about antibiotic and pesticide resistance in the text, the Course Materials, the AIU Online Library and / or the Internet, answer the following.
1.Select and describe one example of antibiotic resistance or pesticide resistance. Be specific in your choice.
Describe the background for your choice of resistance. Include details about the disease or pest and the established control strategies. How have we used antibiotics (to treat a particular disease), or pesticides (to protect from a pest); and how has this changed?
2.Explain how the resistant trait evolved based on principles of natural selection and evolution of a trait at the population level.
3.For your specific example, what are the consequences of resistance in terms of human health or crop loss / damage?
4.What steps can be taken to prevent or slow down the evolution of antibiotic or pesticide resistance? Do you think we will succeed in doing so? Why or why not?
Explanation / Answer
I'm not going to write out the whole response but I will point you in the right direction.
1.) One type of antibiotic resistance I can think of off the top of my head is MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Research this out. It's pretty interesting and there are important clinical repercussions of this resistance.
2.) Look up different antibiotic resistance mechanisms of bacteria, and more specifically how S. aureus has become resistant to penicillin and methicillin. (Some examples include: alteration of target sites, drug modification via use of enzymes, etc). Then how these bacteria pass on these traits to their progeny (ex horizontal gene transfer.)
3.) Here look up the ramifications MRSA has on hospitals.
4.) Once you find out the mechanisms by which MRSA becomes resistant, think of some ways of how we could stop this resistance. Could we synthesize better antibiotics that aren't so easily modified? Could we advocate doctors to be more cognizant of prescribing anti-biotics to those that don't need them (ex for viral infections)?
Those are some suggestions that you can use to write your paper. Hope I've helped :)
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