Using GWAS To Find The Genetic Culprits That Drive Antibiotic Resistance
Thursday, August 7, 2014 - 17:40
in Biology & Nature
Researchers have developed a powerful new tool to identify genetic changes in disease-causing bacteria that are responsible for antibiotic resistance. The team looked at the genome of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterial species that causes 1.6 million deaths worldwide each year. In the most detailed research of its kind, scientists used a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to locate single-letter changes in the DNA code of the bacterium, which enable it to evade antibiotic treatment. While GWAS has been used for a decade to identify gene function in humans, it was thought to be difficult to use the technique on bacterial DNA. read more