3 ms·

I studied antibiotic resistance when I worked in pharma. It's a fiendishly difficult problem. You have a mix of factors that all conspire to a bad outcome. Firs

by JunkDNA 14y ago

I studied antibiotic resistance when I worked in pharma. It's a fiendishly difficult problem. You have a mix of factors that all conspire to a bad outcome. First, you have natural selection, so any antibiotic safe for human consumption is likely to eventually result in drug resistant bacteria. Secon, you have social practices. In the US you have patients who brow beat their doctors into giving them antibiotics when they don't need them. In other parts of the world, you can buy antibiotics over the counter! This is hugely problematic since the genes for resistance spread globally when they get a foothold (you can actually watch this over time with DNA sequencing and careful collection of samples). Finally, on the economic side, most regulators like the FDA will force any new antibiotic to be held back on the shelf and used only as a "drug of last resort". This reduces incentives to develop new antibiotics since the drug patent will expire before you can sell enough to make back the R&D cost. Much better to throw resources at cancer since your drug might end up as a front line therapy there, than to waste time on antibiotics (so the bean counter thinking goes). I honestly don't know what the answer is. Most likely, there will need to be some new tech the bugs have a hard time beating. Outside the body we still have plenty of things that kill bacteria which they can't get around (bleach comes to mind). The likely outcome is some kind of new delivery mechanism that is fast, complete, and highly effective.

seats 14y ago
I wonder if it would be possible to use natural selection and human behavior to our advantage? imagine a compound that causes bacteria to adapt in a way that makes us easier to control them. like putting fluoride in our water we'd distribute the Trojan biological 'malware' into the wild and make bacteria more susceptible to very specific types of treatments.
- JunkDNA 14y ago
  This is a clever idea, but likely to end badly in practice given the way genetics works. Any neutral trait that doesn't confer increased survivability will be filtered out rapidly and never spread. So you would need to design something that gives the bacteria carrying the trait a slight survival advantage, but at the same time has a hidden "back door" we can exploit. Furthermore, the back door has to be intimately tied to increased survival and not just along for the ride. Otherwise, the bacteria will snip the back door part out and keep the part that gives them increased survival. Now you have genetically engineered super-bugs. Oops. Even assuming that you have perfectly designed this new trait to meet the needs of having a back door and increased survivability that are inseparable, you still fail. Eventually, the bacteria all drop your fancy new trait and revert to being plain old bacterium because that state is now the one with the survival advantage that allows them to duck your new fancy antibiotics. Probably, the only angle that is likely to work is immune system modification and enhancement. Something like a vaccine that causes the immune system to go thermonuclear on the pathogen is likely the best route. The immune system is highly adaptable and extremely well-honed. We've successfully driven many viruses to the brink of extinction this way, but the tech we have is not as good for bacteria (though there are vaccines for some bacterial infections).
  - seats 14y ago
    yup, I can see my idea being the start to a sci-fi movie. Even what you describe though is still just building more arms in an arms race. Natural selection itself needs mutations as fuel. Another crack-pot thought - figure out how to decrease the speed of mutations that bacteria are subjected to. Something along the lines of biological or synthetic error correction on DNA. At some point (have we crossed it?) human evolution has moved from physical 'fitness tests' to non-physical. When we get colder now we just design thicker clothes and warmer buildings, etc. Heart disease? more pills and surgeries. I've read people make an interesting case that corn is one of the most successful organisms as measured by adapting to fit because over time it became the corner stone of our entire diet as a species. And by that line of reasoning the genetic modification we do as humans on corn is part of corns continued adaptation. A little meta perhaps, but eventually I wonder how much control we'll have over the biology so that the mutations and modifications would seem artificial and human designed by today standards.

by JunkDNA 14y ago

seats 14y ago

I wonder if it would be possible to use natural selection and human behavior to our advantage? imagine a compound that causes bacteria to adapt in a way that makes us easier to control them. like putting fluoride in our water we'd distribute the Trojan biological 'malware' into the wild and make bacteria more susceptible to very specific types of treatments.

JunkDNA 14y ago
This is a clever idea, but likely to end badly in practice given the way genetics works. Any neutral trait that doesn't confer increased survivability will be filtered out rapidly and never spread. So you would need to design something that gives the bacteria carrying the trait a slight survival advantage, but at the same time has a hidden "back door" we can exploit. Furthermore, the back door has to be intimately tied to increased survival and not just along for the ride. Otherwise, the bacteria will snip the back door part out and keep the part that gives them increased survival. Now you have genetically engineered super-bugs. Oops. Even assuming that you have perfectly designed this new trait to meet the needs of having a back door and increased survivability that are inseparable, you still fail. Eventually, the bacteria all drop your fancy new trait and revert to being plain old bacterium because that state is now the one with the survival advantage that allows them to duck your new fancy antibiotics. Probably, the only angle that is likely to work is immune system modification and enhancement. Something like a vaccine that causes the immune system to go thermonuclear on the pathogen is likely the best route. The immune system is highly adaptable and extremely well-honed. We've successfully driven many viruses to the brink of extinction this way, but the tech we have is not as good for bacteria (though there are vaccines for some bacterial infections).
- seats 14y ago
  yup, I can see my idea being the start to a sci-fi movie. Even what you describe though is still just building more arms in an arms race. Natural selection itself needs mutations as fuel. Another crack-pot thought - figure out how to decrease the speed of mutations that bacteria are subjected to. Something along the lines of biological or synthetic error correction on DNA. At some point (have we crossed it?) human evolution has moved from physical 'fitness tests' to non-physical. When we get colder now we just design thicker clothes and warmer buildings, etc. Heart disease? more pills and surgeries. I've read people make an interesting case that corn is one of the most successful organisms as measured by adapting to fit because over time it became the corner stone of our entire diet as a species. And by that line of reasoning the genetic modification we do as humans on corn is part of corns continued adaptation. A little meta perhaps, but eventually I wonder how much control we'll have over the biology so that the mutations and modifications would seem artificial and human designed by today standards.