Clues to superbug evolution: Microbiologists sequence entire genome of a Klebsiella pneumoniae strain
Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 05:32
in Biology & Nature
Imagine going to the hospital with one disease and coming home with something much worse, or not coming home at all. With the emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistance pathogens, healthcare-associated infections have become a serious threat. On any given day about one in 25 hospital patients has at least one such infection and as many as one in nine die as a result. Microbiologists, for the first time, recently sequenced the entire genome of a Klebsiella pneumoniae strain, encoding New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1).