New research traces evolutionary path of multidrug-resistant strep bacteria
Friday, January 28, 2011 - 18:00
in Biology & Nature
Despite penicillin and the dozens of antibiotics that followed it, streptococcus bacteria have remained a major threat to health throughout the world. The reason: the superb evolutionary skills of this pathogen to rapidly alter its genetic makeup. In a landmark paper published this week in Science, scientists from Rockefeller University and the Sanger Institute have used full genome sequencing to identify the precise steps in the molecular evolution of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Their research shows the changes the genome of this bacterium has undergone in time and during its massive geographic spread over the globe.