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Arthur T Knackerbracket suggests the following story from Phys.org:

To fight a pathogen that's highly resistant to antibiotics, first understand how it gets that way.

Klebsiella pneumoniae strains that carry a particular enzyme are known for "their ability to survive any antibiotics you throw at them," said Corey Hudson of Sandia National Laboratories in California.

Using Sandia's genome sequencing capabilities, Hudson and colleagues Robert Meagher and Kelly Williams, along with former postdoctoral employee Zach Bent, identified several mechanisms that bacteria use to share genes and expand their antibiotic resistance. They found that in some cases, bacteria can receive a new set of genes all at once and in the process become pathogenic.

To better understand how the process works, they focused on the large mobile DNAs, such as plasmids, which exist as free DNA circles apart from the bacterial chromosome, and genomic islands, which can splice themselves into the chromosome. These mobile DNAs are major mechanisms for evolution in organisms that lack a true nucleus. Genomic islands and plasmids carry genes that contribute to everything from metabolism to pathogenicity, and move whole clusters of genes all at once between species.

Identifying how genomic islands move and their effect on bacterial physiology could lead to new approaches to bypass bacterial defenses, Hudson said.

Eventually, the effort might lead to a way to predict new pathogens before they emerge as public health threats.

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