Those bacteria that have ways to protect themselves from antibiotics, what are their mechanisms and how do they work?
In: Biology
Lots of ways, the basic concept behind all of them is that all bacteria have some random amount of mutations each generation. Some small portion of them get lucky and have random mutations that prevent the antibiotic from working without harming the bacteria. Those bacteria then survive and all their descendants have the resistant mutation.
As a specific example, penicillin works by breaking down bacterial cell walls. It finds cell walls by binding to proteins that we call penicillin binding proteins. They have jobs unrelated to penicillin, we just call them that because we discovered them in the context of antibiotic function. Some bacteria have mutations in their genes for penicillin binding proteins that make it so penicillin can’t bind anymore but the normal functions are maintained. These bacteria are now immune to penicillin.
Basically, every new bacteria is a super low odds dice roll for antibiotic resistance, they just multiply at unbelievably high rates so the super low odds actually start to come into play. Bacteria can divide every 4-20 minutes, so with optimal conditions a single bacteria can have twenty generations pass and a million living descendants after just 80 minutes. That’s about 400 years of human evolution ever hour. There have been approximately 12,000 generations of humans who have ever lived, bacteria can do that in a couple of months.
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