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There’s been an unexpected development in our understanding of drug resistance in bacteria. The accepted scenario was a simple case of evolutionary selection. In a bacterial population exposed to a killer drug, a few lucky individuals might have a genetic mutation that kept them alive. They survived to reproduce, while the rest of the population perished. In short order, the entire colony consisted only of the offspring of the drug-resistant founders.
But a new study finds that just a few resistant mutants can protect large numbers of normal bacteria that would have been thought to be susceptible to the drug therapy. The research appears in the journal Nature. [Henry Lee et al, http://bit.ly/9NG5Ud]
The key seems to be that the drug-resistant mutants produce large amounts of compounds called indoles, which help bacteria tough out tough times. And the indoles from the mutants buck up the regular, nonresistant bacteria. The mutants themselves seem to be acting altruistically—their own growth is slowed by their indole production.
The finding should lead to new strategies to fight drug resistance. And it could also improve our take on evolutionary dynamics, in systems that apparently experience selection pressure at both the individual and group levels.
—Steve Mirsky
[Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group.]
[The above text is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
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7 Comments
Add CommentSo the mutants are in a sense "taking one for the team?" It's fascinating to ponder the impact of genetic mutation resistance in relation to drug resistance, and the underlying conceptual framework of evolutionary selection.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for fulfil the promise and give us the external link!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSciencemag.org (01 September 2010) has also a succinct and very comprehensible text about that process.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLINK to the article:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/09/scienceshot-altruistic-bacteria.html
Wow, very impressive finding. If this kind of "altruism" occurs in vivo and is conserved across species we could be looking at a potential game changer here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisabrasileirosilva - Thanks for the link. Even the Science news article used the term altruism, but unless these special cells suffer in some unspecified way from their production of the indole molecule, this seems less a case of self-sacrifice than cellular specialization.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis development in a colony of bacterial cells could be considered as organic specialization for the colony under external attack - a rudimentary immune system, perhaps a more significant development that the imagined 'altruistic' behavior.
Indoles have also been found in vegetables to boost their -and our- immune system, providing we eat them! For a plant-based anti-cancer diet, see under 'Yanchep Diet' on Youthevity.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have to face ther serious fact that it is difficult to kill bacteria in the future
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this