A team of Harvard and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology researchers are spearheading a new study they hope will help scientists better comprehend the puzzling patterns underlying antimicrobial resistance.

Published in the journal Science Thursday, the revolutionary visualization method is also seen as a possible solution to the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance that has come to plague medical facilities across the globe.

How Experiment Works

The experiment operates by researchers setting up what's essentially a giant rectangular petri dish known as the "microbial evolution growth arena plate" (MEGA plate for short). At each end of the table, bacteria is readily introduced and allowed to spread and multiply.

While there are no antibiotics set up at the end of the MEGA to confront the spreading bacteria, every several centimeters scientists have painted bands of antibiotics in toward the center that increase in potency as they move along.

Each increase of the antibiotic serves as a stressor that the bacteria have to cope with and overcome. Right before the eyes of researchers, the bands of increasingly powerful antibiotics (either trimethoprim or ciprofloxacin) move the bacteria to evolve, essentially outsmarting the medicines that are designed to kill them.

In time, a small group of bacteria, or those that have been mutated to the point of surviving all the chemicals they have been hit with, breaks through. Such mutant bacteria than becomes the dominant type, with the process repeating itself until the bacteria reaches the level of total resistance at the center. The videoed documentation offered by researchers was comprised over 12 days.

Many Antibiotic Prescriptons not Needed

A recent report in JAMA found that nearly one-third or 30 percent of all antibiotic prescriptions were unnecessary. What's more, when physicians needlessly prescribe antibiotics for things like the common cold, they increase the chance of bacteria eventually becoming resistant to them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that as many as 23,000 people died from resistant infections in 2013 and its estimated that by half of the century antimicrobial-resistant diseases will result in more deaths than cancer.

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