How antibiotics help spread resistance
Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - 12:20
in Biology & Nature
Bacteria can become insensitive to antibiotics by picking up resistance genes from the environment. Unfortunately for patients, the stress response induced by antibiotics activates competence, the ability of cells to take up and integrate foreign DNA, in microorganisms. Microbiologists now describe a new mechanism by which Streptococcus pneumoniae can become competent, and why biofilms may be important in this process.