The Antibiotics Apocalypse: Part i

What would you say if we told you that humanity is currently making a collaborative effort to engineer the perfect super-bug?

A bug that could kill hundreds of millions of people?

Well, it is happening right now. We are in a process of creating a super bacterium.

What are Bacteria?

Bacteria are among the oldest living things on the planet. The smallest thing we still consider life, they are masters of survival and could be found everywhere. Most bacteria are harmless to us. Your body hosts trillions of them, and they help you to survive. But others can invade your body, spread quickly, and kill you. Millions of people used to die as a result of bacterial infections. Until we developed a super weapon called antibiotics. Together with vaccinations, antibiotics revolutionized medicine and saved millions of lives.

Antibiotics and it’s importance:

Antibiotics kill the vast majority of susceptible bacteria fairly quickly, leaving only a small group of survivors that our immune system then deals with easily.

How do antibiotics do this?

Imagine a bacterium as a very complex machine with thousands of complex processes going on that keep it alive and active. Antibiotic disrupt this complex machinery,for example, by interfering with its metabolism, slowing down their growth significantly, so they are less of a threat. Other antibiotics attack DNA and prevent it from being replicated, which stops bacteria from multiplying, ultimately killing them. Or by simply ripping the outer layer of the bacteria to shreds, so that their inside spill out and they die quickly. All of this without bothering body cells. But now, evolution is making things more complicated. By pure random chance, a small minority of the bacteria invading your body might have evolved a way to protect themselves. For example, by intercepting the antibiotics and changing the molecule so it becomes harmless. Or by investing energy in pumps that eject the antibiotics before they can do any damage. A few immune bacteria are not that big a deal because the immune system can take care of them. But if they escape, they might spread their immunity.

How can Bacteria spread immunity?

First of all, bacteria have two kinds of DNA: the chromosome and small free-floating parts called plasmids. They can hug each other and exchange those plasmids to exchange useful abilities. This way, immunity can be spread quickly through a population. Or, in a process called transformation, bacteria can harvest dead bacteria and collect DNA pieces. This even works between different bacteria species and can lead to superbugs, bacteria that are immune to multiple antibiotics. A variety of superbugs already exist in the world. Especially hospitals are the perfect breeding grounds for them. Humans have short memories. The horrors of pre-antibiotic era has been forgotten. Today, we treat this powerful medicine as a commodity instead of as the game-changing achievement of science that it is. This has lead to a strange disconnect: hundreds of millions of people still don’t have access to antibiotics in developing countries, while in other parts of the world antibiotics are prescribed too freely and taken without care.

More about superbugs and antibiotics in the next part. Happy Reading.