Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Video Shows How Bacteria Invade Antibiotics And Transform Into Superbugs (npr.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the visually-stunning dept.

guises writes: By making a giant petri dish out of bands of increasingly antibiotic-laced agar, a couple of microbiologists have created a means to watch bacterial evolution as it happens: colonies introduced to the dish expand to fill the areas in which they can survive and then mutate and spread into the areas in which they can not. It takes only eleven days for the bacteria to evolve sufficient resistance to survive in an area with a thousand times the concentration of antibiotics that would have killed the original colonies. And it makes a pretty neat video.

4 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. Now this is cool! by McLae · · Score: 4, Informative
    A very graphic way of showing selection in action.

    Now you know why your doctor says take all the pills in the prescription. You want to be at 1000, not 1.

  3. Re:DNA analysis? by meerling · · Score: 4, Informative

    That has been done before and they are different. Also, there's not just one mutation that can occur to create antibiotic resistance, they've cataloged a large number of them that can each result in resistance.

  4. Re:Title is Correct by guises · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's not the title I submitted: "Scientists create invincible super bacteria in order to make a cool video"

    Oh well, it bothers me more that they changed "couldn't" to "can not." Let it be known: I got the tense right.