Dodging magic bullets: The evolution of bacterial antibiotic resistance

Authors

  • Álvaro San Millán Microbiology Service of the Ramon y Cajal University Hospital (IRYCIS) in Madrid (Spain) and Epidemiology and Public Health Networking Biomedical Research Centre (CIBERESP).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.10.14838

Keywords:

evolutionary innovation, antibiotic resistance, bacteria, plasmids, horizontal gene transfer

Abstract

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria currently represent one of the main public health problems and recent predictions indicate that they will soon become the world’s leading cause of death. The ill-fated journey from the introduction of antibiotics into clinical practice to the current threat of a post-antibiotic era has run its course in just a few decades. Thus, the evolution of antibiotic resistance is probably the most spectacular example of evolution of a biological system innovation that we have had the opportunity to observe in real time. This text discusses some of the evolutionary and molecular keys that have allowed bacteria to go down this path.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Álvaro San Millán, Microbiology Service of the Ramon y Cajal University Hospital (IRYCIS) in Madrid (Spain) and Epidemiology and Public Health Networking Biomedical Research Centre (CIBERESP).

Researcher in the Microbiology Service of the Ramon y Cajal University Hospital (IRYCIS) in Madrid (Spain) and member of the Epidemiology and Public Health Networking Biomedical Research Centre (CIBERESP). He directs the PBE lab research group which studies the role of plasmids in general bacterial evolution and in the evolution of antibiotic resistance in particular (www.pbelab.es). His work covers everything from the most basic aspects of the evolutionary biology and population genetics of plasmid-bacterium associations to their clinical applications.  

References

Buckling, A., Craig Maclean, R., Brockhurst, M. A., & Colegrave, N. (2009). The Beagle in a bottle. Nature, 457, 824–829. doi: 10.1038/nature07892

CDC. (2013). Antibiotic resistance threats in the United States. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, US Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013

ECDC. (2013). Annual epidemiological report 2012. Reporting on 2010 surveillance data and 2011 epidemic intelligence data. Stockholm: ECDC. Retrieved from https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/annual-epidemiological-report-2012-2010-data

Fleming, A. (1945, 11 December). Penicillin. Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Retrieved from https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/fleming-lecture.pdf

Jonas, O., Parry, I., Chisholm, D., Banatvala, N., & Ladminarayan, R. (2014). Global health threats of the 21st century. Finance and Development, 51(4), 16–20. Retrieved from https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/12/jonas.htm

Mayr, E. (1963). Animal species and evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

O’Neill, J. (2016). Tackling drug-resistant infections globally: Final report and recommendations. London: Review on Antimicrobal Resistance. 

Rodríguez-Beltrán, J., Hernández-Beltrán, J. C. R., DelaFuente, J., Escudero, J. A., Fuentes-Hernández, A., MacLean, R. C., … San Millán, A. (2018.) Multicopy plasmids allow bacteria to escape from fitness trade-offs during evolutionary innovation. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2, 873–881. doi: 10.1038/s41559-018-0529-z

San Millán, A. (2018). Evolution of plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance in the clinical context. Trends in Microbiology, 26(12), 978–985. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2018.06.007

San Millán, A., Escudero, J. A., Gifford, D. R., Mazel, D., & MacLean, R. C. (2016). Multicopy plasmids potentiate the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1, 0010. doi: 10.1038/s41559-016-0010

Tan, S. Y., Grimes, S. (2010). Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915): Man with the magic bullet. Singapore Medical Journal, 51(11), 842–843.

Wagner, A. (2015). Arrival of the fittest: How nature innovates. New York: Current.

WHO. (2016). United Nations high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/antimicrobial-resistance/events/UNGA-meeting-amr-sept2016/en/

WHO. (2018). Antibiotic Resistance. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-resistance

Downloads

Published

2020-01-08

How to Cite

San Millán, Álvaro. (2020). Dodging magic bullets: The evolution of bacterial antibiotic resistance. Metode Science Studies Journal, (10), 207–211. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.10.14838
Metrics
Views/Downloads
  • Abstract
    1362
  • PDF
    542

Issue

Shades of science (2020)

Section

Endless forms. Evolutionary scenarios to unravel biodiversity

License

All the documents in the OJS platform are open access and property of their respective authors.

Authors publishing in the journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors keep the rights and guarantee Metode Science Studies Journal the right to be the first publication of the document, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of authorship and publication in the journal.
  2. Authors are allowed and encouraged to spread their work through electronic means using personal or institutional websites (institutional open archives, personal websites or professional and academic networks profiles) once the text has been published.

Metrics

Similar Articles

<< < > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.