Why can bacteria adapt to antibiotics, but not adapt to environmental things like heat or acids/soaps (Salmonella as an example)?

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Edit: I’ve had a lot of fun reading all of your analogies

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Anonymous 0 Comments

They can evolve a resistance to heat. Evolution takes time, it’s all about biodiversity some individuals may be more resistant to heat than others. If you slowly introduce a colony of bacteria to a slightly higher temp, the individual that has a mutation that just so happens to make it survive better than the rest at that slightly higher temp, will survive and pass on its resistance genes while the rest die off. So now on average your colony of bacteria is ever so slightly more resistant to heat. Repeat that multiple times and you have a colony that survived at high temp. (But may not survive at room temp like the original colony) heat can kill bacteria because it basically goes from room temp straight to lethal for all present bacteria. (The freight train analogy from another comment) Without the slow increase in temp, the bacteria doesn’t have a chance to evolve.

The problem with antibiotics is that people don’t finish doses and that lets the slightly more resistant bacteria survive to pass on its gene. While taking the full dose would have killed all (or at least enough that your immune system could handle what’s left). When one person doesn’t take a full dose of antibiotics, then passes the contagious bacteria to another person who also doesn’t take a full dose, the bacteria is slowly exposed to the antibiotics at just the right rate that the resistant ones survive but the non resistant doesn’t. Just like slowly increasing the temp from the example earlier. And the more resistant it becomes the stronger the antibiotics you have to use. If you repeat the same mistake with the stronger antibiotics on the more resistant bacteria, you just make the problem worse.

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