6 ms·

They would - until they started exchanging DNA with modern bacteria.

• hga 10y ago
  "Modern", sort of, since these antibiotics have generally started from compounds molds etc. use for attacks on bacteria in the same ecological niche, many if not most?? of these counters have by and large been there all along in the modern age of antibiotics, it's just that they now spread a lot more since they give bacteria attacking humans a competitive advantage (few if any of these otherwise help the bacteria, especially unless the plasmid or whatever has a regulatory system to turn it off when not needed). And many can be countered with standard mutations, i.e. something that messes with the surface protein that transports them inside. When I was doing a bit of E. Coli microbiology in the summer of 1977 the conventional wisdom was for a generic antibiotic, like the colicin we were working with, 1 in a million bacterial would spontaneously develop a mutation (which I further did the grunt work to prove the ones we had were of the surface protein type, by and large). Streptomycin, though, would take 1 in a billion.