Picture: "Antibiotic resistance is a natural phenomenon that predates modern clinical antibiotic use, new research shows. Principal investigators for the study are Hendrik Poinar, left, a McMaster evolutionary geneticist and associate professor of anthropology, and Gerry Wright, scientific director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research. (Credit: Image courtesy of McMaster University)"Scientists from the McMaster University have recently found that bacteria have developed resistance to antibiotics, not just since the last century, but since 30,000 years ago. Antibiotic resistance is a phenomenon where bacteria are not affected by antibiotics, which are supposed to serve as a defense mechanism against these bacteria, and this has existed before antibiotics were created.
"Antibiotic resistance is seen as a current problem and the fact that antibiotics are becoming less effective because of resistance spreading in hospitals is a known fact," said Wright. "The big question is where does all of this resistance come from?"
Researchers have been studying bacterial DNA in an area in the Yukon Territory and the soil was frozen in the 30,000-year-old permafrost. They were able to isolate the DNA strands and separate them in order to study them in the McMaster's DNA Ancient DNA Centre.
Through this investigation, the researchers discovered that the genes for antibiotic resistance existed next to the genes that encoded DNA for ancient animals and specimens, such as horses, bison, mammoths, and plants that existed in that area during the Pleistocene era, at least 30,000 years ago.
"We identified that these genes were present in the permafrost at depths consistent with the age of the other DNAs, such as the mammoth. Brian Golding of McMaster's Department of Biology showed that these were not contemporary, but formed part of the same family tree. We then recreated the gene product in the lab, purified its protein and showed that it had the same activity and structure then as it does now."
This is the second lab that scientists are able to 'revive' an ancient protein in a laboratory. This could be a very important breakthrough for understanding the nature of antibiotic resistance.
"Antibiotics are part of the natural ecology of the planet so when we think that we have developed some drug that won't be susceptible to resistance or some new thing to use in medicine, we are completely kidding ourselves. These things are part of our natural world and therefore we need to be incredibly careful in how we use them. Microorganisms have figured out a way of how to get around them well before we even figured out how to use them," said Wright.
Now there are researchers exploring the issue of ancient antibiotic resistance due to this recent discovery.
What interested me about this article was that it talks about how antibiotics are not effective and have not been effective since decades ago and this is something that affects all humans in the world since we all get sick from bacteria and other microorganisms. Since I read the title of the article I decided to read more about it because it interested me to know about the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. It is fascinating how medicine, in relation to the natural world, tries to understand it in order to make cures for diseases that could affect all humans. I can draw connections to my life from this article because I use antibiotics when I am sick to feel better. This article relates to the area of interaction Health and Social Education because it is an issue that affects the health of all the people in the world.
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