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This is also why bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics. You can’t develop resistance against something that is 99.999% effective through design

dnautics 6y ago
it's not like bacteria haven't developed resistance to phages. what do you think CRISPR is?
- Fomite 6y ago
  Interestingly, in several phage-treated patients, the bacteria then had increased susceptibility to antibiotics. Combination therapy is a remarkable thing.
GuB-42 6y ago
It is not that bacteria can't become resistant to phages. It is that it is comparatively easy to make new phages to the resistant bacteria. Being viruses, they will evolve with the bacteria they target. The problem with antibiotic resistance is not the resistance itself, but that we don't seem to find new antibiotics anymore. As a result, once bacteria are resistant to all what we have, it is the end.
- FooBarWidget 6y ago
  But isn't that just a market problem? Once resistance is widespread, won't companies be incentivized to find new antibiotics?
  - galangalalgol 6y ago
    There are presumably a finite number of chemicals that are of the right molecular size to get where they need to go, kill a reasonbly broad range of bacteria, and don't harm humans. We may have found them all already.
- suifbwish 6y ago
  We aren’t finding new antibiotics anymore because there are only so many human-safe systemic vulnerabilities to take apart/stop bacteria metabolism biochemically without moving into the genetic arena for further variation. What we are really exhausting are the biochemical differences between our cells and the bacteria cells by wiping out things that make the bacteria unique. This is really bad because it drives additional compatability with the human body while eliminating ways for our immune system to tell them apart as well. We have been driving the evolution of bacteria toward this since we discovered penicillin. What we need is to introduce new genes blocks into wild bacteria that make them susceptible to artificial compounds we create while also conferring a survival and even reproduction advantage to them over bacteria that lack the implanted gene blocks. This would balance out the evolutionary force of the artificial compound vulnerability. I’m fully expecting the Jurassic Park chaos mettling with nature speech but we have precious few options when completely resistant strains of new lethal bacteria inevitably emerge.

dnautics 6y ago

it's not like bacteria haven't developed resistance to phages. what do you think CRISPR is?

Fomite 6y ago
Interestingly, in several phage-treated patients, the bacteria then had increased susceptibility to antibiotics. Combination therapy is a remarkable thing.

GuB-42 6y ago

It is not that bacteria can't become resistant to phages. It is that it is comparatively easy to make new phages to the resistant bacteria. Being viruses, they will evolve with the bacteria they target. The problem with antibiotic resistance is not the resistance itself, but that we don't seem to find new antibiotics anymore. As a result, once bacteria are resistant to all what we have, it is the end.

FooBarWidget 6y ago
But isn't that just a market problem? Once resistance is widespread, won't companies be incentivized to find new antibiotics?
- galangalalgol 6y ago
  There are presumably a finite number of chemicals that are of the right molecular size to get where they need to go, kill a reasonbly broad range of bacteria, and don't harm humans. We may have found them all already.
suifbwish 6y ago
We aren’t finding new antibiotics anymore because there are only so many human-safe systemic vulnerabilities to take apart/stop bacteria metabolism biochemically without moving into the genetic arena for further variation. What we are really exhausting are the biochemical differences between our cells and the bacteria cells by wiping out things that make the bacteria unique. This is really bad because it drives additional compatability with the human body while eliminating ways for our immune system to tell them apart as well. We have been driving the evolution of bacteria toward this since we discovered penicillin. What we need is to introduce new genes blocks into wild bacteria that make them susceptible to artificial compounds we create while also conferring a survival and even reproduction advantage to them over bacteria that lack the implanted gene blocks. This would balance out the evolutionary force of the artificial compound vulnerability. I’m fully expecting the Jurassic Park chaos mettling with nature speech but we have precious few options when completely resistant strains of new lethal bacteria inevitably emerge.