Difference between revisions of "Team:IIT Madras/Background"
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| + | <h2>Evolved Resistance Mechanism against anitmicrobial peptide</h2> | ||
| + | <p>It has recently been shown that in vitro exposure of bacteria to slowly increasing cationic AMP concentrations over several hundred generations can result in reversible physiological adaptation and/or spontaneous, inheritable resistance to the peptide used. The most observed and hypothesized resistance mechanisms include :</p> | ||
| + | <ul> | ||
| + | <li>Alteration of bacterial cell surface charge density and pattern.</li> | ||
| + | <li>Release of proteases, which break the peptide bonds in the anitimicrobial peptide.</li> | ||
| + | <li>Trapping or extrusion of antimicrobial peptides.</li> | ||
| + | <li>Biofilm formation could diminish the activity of antimicrobial peptides.</li> | ||
| + | </ul> | ||
| − | <h2> | + | <h2>How would our system help in tackling the emergence of Antibiotic resistance?</h2> |
| − | <p> | + | <p>As we all are familiar with the theory of natural selection, which says that the species which have adapted it's environment at best would be survive and selected for further generations. Bacteria is a species which has practically lived for billion years. On the course of time, bacteria has evolved to a level which is best for it's survival because of natural selection. The theory of natural selection also talk about trade-off between genes and their function, which is that if you mutate a gene (which gives a functional protein) you might get additional properties from the protein but you would also loose it's inherited property.</p> |
| − | + | Based on the above theory, if we think of a pathogenic bacterium | |
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Revision as of 16:43, 16 September 2015
What are antibiotics?
Antibiotics, also known as antimicrobial agents are drugs that fight infections caused by bacteria. The key word in the previous sentence is bacteria. Antibiotics will have no effect if taken during a a viral infection like common cold, most sore throats and the flu. However, bacterial infections are a threat too, and antibiotics have served us well in fighting them for over 70 years. So how do they work? Antibiotics are chemicals that interact adversely with different components of a bacterium's structure and/or metabolism, thus bringing about their demise. For example some antibiotics like penicillins attack the cell wall and rupture it, others like tetracyclines target protein synthesis. The diagram below shows some of the molecular targets of antibiotics on bacterial cells.
How does resistance develop?
The emergence of antimicrobial resistance is an evolutionary mechanism. The bacterial population consists of several variants for each of it's gene. Essential proteins are being targeted by most of the antibiotics, which is mostly docking of drug to the protein. Among the variants, few proteins could have a property like they can function but the drug can not dock to the protein anymore. Now, the bacterial cells which have these proteins become resistant.