Superbug Research Paper

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Recommended: Antibiotic resistance

Superbugs
Staphylococcus aureus, aka, Golden Staph because of its colour on the laboratory plate. It is a bacteria that is normally harmless to the skin, can sometimes cause minor infections and boils etc. This bacteria is slowly becoming more resistant to the most powerful antibiotics. 20 – 40% of all Golden Staph are resistant to the antibiotic. Only 5% of those bacteria can be treated with vancomycin which is the last line of defence and isn’t looking too good anymore. Golden Staph is a type of superbug. Superbugs are strains of bacteria that are resistant to overused antibiotics as they have mutated after being in contact with antibiotics. Therefore the antibiotics can't kill the superbug anymore. Around half antibiotic intake is unnecessary in Australia. Development
Recent development of molecular cloning systems has made it possible to isolate the biosynthetic genes for many antibiotics produced by the important genus of a bacteria. These clones can now be used to test the idea of novel antibiotics and how they could arise through biosynthetic genes between Streptomyces's which are the largest family of actinobacteria and therefore creating different antibiotics. There is little known about how to actually make a 'hybrid' compound as the likelihood of actually making one depends of the specificities of the …show more content…

Some have the ability to pump violating bacteria out, and others produce an enzyme called NDM-1, this allows it to essentially "chew up" the bacteria and therefore leaving it ineffective. The genes inside these bacteria have evolved over centuries and are now left nearly incurable. A team of MIT researchers have developed their own gene editing system that has the potential to switch on and off particular genes in the bacteria and therefore turning the gene that spurs the antibiotic resistance. This system works by taking control of the bacteria's own immune

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