Tuesday, January 5, 2016

ANOTHER ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT SUPERBUG

An alarming new superbug gene that makes bacteria resistant to a last-resort antibiotic has been detected in Canada.
The gene, called MCR-1, produces an enzyme that makes bacteria invincible to colistin, a highly-toxic antibiotic used only when all other drugs have failed.
 But the news that really sent a shudder through the scientific community was that MCR-1 is located on a plasmid — a free-floating snippet of DNA that bacteria can easily share, thus spreading the resistance to other organisms.
 
 

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