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[R]esearchers at the University of California San Diego who combine experiments and mathematical modeling have discovered an unexpected mechanism that allows bacteria to survive antibiotics.
As described in the March 7 early online release of the journal Cell, Dong-yeon Lee, Maja Bialecka-Fornal and Gürol Süel of UC San Diego's Division of Biological Sciences, along with Leticia Galera-Laporta of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain), and colleagues discovered that bacteria defend themselves against antibiotics by controlling the uptake of alkaline metal ions. When under attack by antibiotics, bacteria were found to modulate magnesium ion uptake in order to stabilize their ribosomes -- the fundamental molecular machines of life that translate genes into proteins -- as a survival technique.
[...] The new findings lay the scientific groundwork for new ways to counteract antibiotic resistance.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday March 13 2019, @02:06AM (1 child)
Bacteria aren't smart. Researchers found an existing mechanism that current treatments don't work for.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:26AM
my own opinion is that bacteria are a lot smarter than the rovers we sent to mars, and those rovers are remarkable.
bacteria are a complex organism that measure their environment and change their behavior based on these measurements.
both the bacteria and the rovers have a set of specific instructions that they use to change their behavior.
the rovers would ignore input that is not accounted for in their instruction set, just as bacteria.
but bacteria's instruction set is generated through a genetic algorithm, it is unique to each individual, and it can handle much more diverse scenarios than can the rover's instruction set.