INFECTIOUS FIGHT: TACKLING THE INEVITABILITY OF RESISTANCE, ONE GENOME AT A TIME

FEBRUARY 7, 2017

JEFFREY S. BUGULISKIS, PH.D., TECHNICAL EDITOR

"Geology is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes really... pressure... and time...,” bellows Morgan Freeman’s character, Red, when foreshadowing his friend Andy Dufresne’s harrowing escape from prison in the critically acclaimed movie Shawshank Redemption. Oddly enough, this same logic can be applied to antibiotic resistance, although bacterial change occurs exponentially more rapidly than the millennia it can take to create various geological wonders. For microbes, however, the biological pressures that scientists presume underlie the formation of resistance mutations doesn’t come in the form of sedimentation, stalactites, or shifts in plate tectonics, as it does in geology. Rather, the genetic burdens exerted by numerous human developed antibiotic, and drug therapies, as well as natural environmental conditions, are the most significant factors fueling resistance.