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Antibiotic Resistance Lab Report

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Predicting the duration for development of antibiotic resistance against an antibiotic by an isolated colony of bacteria, using computer simulated “natural” selection
Sidharth.R, KMC Manipal

Introduction
The development of antibiotic resistant strains are on the rise especially in developing countries and are creating a crisis in the effective treatment of infections.1,5
Without horizontal gene transfer, antibiotic resistance develops in most bacteria by mutation in the gene that codes for the enzyme that targets the antibiotic. (B-lactamases in case of B-lactams.)2
The incidence of new forms of isozymes of B-lactamase is rapidly increasing with the increased use of antibiotics like carbapeneme. [blaNDM-1 gene]
The polypeptide sequence of …show more content…

The one with the most resemblance is the one with the most chance of occurring naturally.

Calculating the duration to develop resistance
(In this study we assume antibiotics aren’t 100% effective and hence don’t kill all bacteria that don’t contain the “novel” enzyme)
By knowing the DNA sequence of the of possibly antibiotic resistant bacteria, we can determine the minimum number of changes in the base pair sequence required to acquire antibiotic resistance (i.e. comparing the actual DNA sequence with the virtually generated sequence with most resemblance)
Let this number of base pair changes required be = n
Let the avg. number of base pairs mutated per generation (mutation rate) be = m
Let the generation time of the bacterial species be = G
Therefore, the time taken to develop antibiotic resistance in an isolated colony of bacteria (without horizontal gene transfer) = …show more content…

Chawla K, Gurung B, Mukhopadhyay C, Bairy I. Reporting Emerging Resistance of Streptococcus pneumoniae from India. Journal of Global Infectious Diseases. 2010;2(1):10-14. doi:10.4103/0974-777X.59245.
2. Bush K, Jacoby GA, Medeiros AA (June 1995). "A functional classification scheme for beta-lactamases and its correlation with molecular structure". Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 39 (6): 1211–33. doi:10.1128/AAC.39.6.1211. PMC 162717.PMID 7574506.
3. Neu HC (June 1969). "Effect of beta-lactamase location in Escherichia coli on penicillin synergy". Appl Microbiol 17 (6): 783–6. PMC 377810. PMID

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