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>Unfortunately, if you study how evolution actually works you'll realize what it means for resistant bacteria. Once a fully resistant bacterial strain evolves,
by Shinkei 13y ago
>Unfortunately, if you study how evolution actually works you'll realize what it means for resistant bacteria. Once a fully resistant bacterial strain evolves, a process that takes between decades and centuries, all other species of bacteria will quickly copy the resistance, in a matter of months to years. Which is exactly what we've seen happening.
This is the important point that people forget. Bacteria are experiencing an extremely accelerated time course and can evolve and exchange advantageous mutations very quickly. We have only had antibiotics for 100 years, which is 3-4 generations of man, but billions of generations of bacteria!
- einhverfr 13y agoI am not actually sure that it takes as long as people think. The fact is it isn't just individual genes, but selection for combinations of them. If you look at random mutations, I think that is likely dwarfed by random permutations. This is why the resistance bell curve shifts over time. You aren't just selecting for a single gene, but for a function, which could be carried out any number of different ways, and which any number of different gene combinations could do it.