Several bacterial species have now become antibiotic resistant. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is one of the deadliest superbugs. This bacterium can cause gastrointestinal, urinary tract and respiratory infections. It also causes dermatitis and soft tissue infections. Treating the infections caused by P. aeruginosa can be difficult due to the current trend of developing antibiotic resistance. Livestock farmers often add antibiotics to animal feed to prevent infections in crowded animal enclosures and to promote growth. Bacteria carried by these animals then become antibiotic resistant, and are able to transfer the antibiotic-resistance traits to human infection-causing bacteria as well.
Now, what can we do to protect ourselves from such antibiotic-resistant bacteria? The first option would be to make better and more advanced antibiotics, right? However, bacteria are also constantly mutating and evolving. It is likely that they would become resistant to the new and advanced antibiotics as well.
So, in order to counter these rapidly evolving bacteria, we need something that can evolve simultaneously at an equal pace. Something alive, maybe?! Would it be possible to employ other microorganisms to kill or stop the growth of pathogenic bacteria? A bacteriophage, maybe? Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria. They inject themselves into bacteria and gain control of the bacterial cellular machinery. They use bacterial resources to make more and more copies of themselves eventually bursting and killing the bacterial cells! As the bacteria evolve, the phages evolve too. If the bacteria develop mechanisms to protect themselves, the bacteriophages try to overcome the bacterial defence systems. We can genetically engineer the bacteriophages to destroy the target pathogenic bacteria. Antibiotics are not targeted therapies. They affect the good bacteria in our gut making us susceptible to side-effects like diarrhoea.
Biotechnology can reach new heights if we successfully discover novel microorganism-based therapies to treat antibiotic-resistant infections.
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