4 ms·

I think (and if I'm wrong someone please correct me) that adaptations the bacteria evolve are specific features to specific pathways that they have for removing

• maxerickson 11y ago
  It depends on what you meant by pathway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_resistance#Mechanisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_resistance#Mecha... The mechanism can be encoded on a plasmid, for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC514751/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC514751/ So in that case, a bacteria could import the mechanism wholesale from a resistant population. (Plasmids are fragments of DNA that bacteria can swap back and forth, even across species)