It is one of the biggest concerns of world health authorities: the resistance that some bacteria develop to antibiotics. Therefore, the efforts of scientists are focused on finding out how they obtain and spread the genes that make them invulnerable .
For more than 30 years, suspicion has fallen on the DNA of the same microorganisms with which bactericidal treatments are made , but it had not been proven until now. A group of scientists from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, at the Technical University of Denmark, assures that the case has finally been solved: the genes for resistance to antibiotics in gram-negative bacteria (a family of pathogens that cause numerous diseases, such as salmonellosis, Crohn’s disease, pneumonia or urinary tract infections) come from actinobacteria . It should be borne in mind that three quarters of antibiotics are manufactured with this edge of microorganisms.
Although the most curious thing is to know how the fatal transfer occurs, something a priori very complicated because both types of microbes are very different, they are not related. As explained in the journal Nature Communications , there appears to be a kind of primitive sexual exchange , a mechanism that Danish researchers call carry back , something like “memory.”
This would happen when gram-negative bacteria come into contact with actinobacteria; for example, in farm animals or in untreated hospital waste. Microbial “mating” involves the death of actinobacteria and the acquisition of “super-resistant” genes by pathogenic microorganisms.
And what is the next step to take? Although genetic exchange cannot be avoided, scientists hope that its discovery will allow the development of more personalized drugs or other formulas that prevent infectious agents from surviving .
References:
Xinglin Jiang, Mostafa M. Hashim Ellabaan, Pep Charusanti, Christian Munck, Kai Blin, Yaojun Tong, Tilmann Weber, Morten OA Sommer & Sang Yup Lee. (2017). Dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes from antibiotic producers to pathogens. Nature Communications. Doi: 10.1038 / ncomms15784.
