Scientists Found How Bacteria Turn Their 'Sleep' Mode On To Establish Resistance During The Antibiotic Treatment

Antibiotic resistance now has become a global threat. World Health Organization(WHO) has announced that new resistance mechanism of bacteria is emerging and spreading globally. Bacteria’s resistance on antibiotic threatens the ability to cure common infectious disease. Although it is still unknown how to predict the evolution of bacteria.

A group of researcher from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found an alternative way to fight against bacteria. At the previous studies, researchers found that Bacteria evolve a “timer” that keeps them in hibernation during the antibiotic treatment. After that, when the activity of the antibiotic drug is over then bacteria restarts their resistant evolution 20 times faster than the normal. So, literally applying the same antibiotics won't kills the bacteria.

To deal with this issue Prof. Nathalie Balaban and Ph.D. student Irit Levin-Reisman found an easy solution to continue the antibiotic treatment for a long period. The team exposed the bacteria colonies with a daily dosage of antibiotics under the controlled condition at their laboratory. Researchers continued the process until those bacteria colonies established their resistance.

According to Science Daily, researchers tracked the entire process of evolution and found that the lethal dose of antibiotic gave rise to bacteria that were transiently dormant. This thing actually protects the bacteria from several types of antibiotics. After gaining the ability to go dormant, bacteria colonies rapidly mutates themselves to overcome the antibiotic treatment.

Scientists termed the resistance as “Tolerance”, according to the scientific result, tolerance plays a crucial role in the bacterial evolution of resistance. Tolerance leads a large number of mutation, in that sense tolerance is the key factor for partial resistance mutation. Their findings were first published in the journal of Science.

Researchers are hopeful that unveiling the mystery behind the dynamics of antibiotic resistance. Physicists developed a theoretical model and computer simulation to deeply understand the reason behind the fast evolution of resistance that was observed.