The Emergent Microbiome: A Revolution for the Life Sciences – Part XIII, The Microbiome and Antibiotic Resistance
Oct 3rd, 2017 by David Puleo | News | Recent News & Articles | The Emergent Microbiome Series |
Antibiotic resistance is a major problem in the United States and is considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be one of the largest threats to human health. The top 12 bacterial threats classified by WHO are shown in Table 21. Researchers are going so far as to send antibiotic resistant bacteria into space in order to determine how the bacteria mutate, with the thought being that in space, bacteria will mutate at an accelerated rate, making it easier to study bacterial resistance patterns and, therefore, develop better antibiotics that are active against resistant bacterial forms.