Epta Essay

In the past tense 60 years, antibiotic drugs have been critical to the fight against infectious disease caused by bacteria and other microbe. Antimicrobial chemotherapy has been a lead cause for the dramatic rise of norm life expectancy in the Twentieth Century. 1 However, disease-causing bug that have become resistant to antibiotic drug therapy are an increasing public health trouble. “Wound contagion, tuberculosis, pneumonia, gonorrhea, childhood ear infections, and septicemia are just a few of the diseases that have become hard to treat with antibiotics.” 2 One part of the job is that bacteria and other germ that cause infections are remarkably resilient and have developed several ways to resist antibiotics and other antimicrobial drug. 3 Another part of the problem is due to increasing use, and abuse, of existing

This experiment focuses on genetic engineering and transformation of bacteria. The characteristics of bacteria are altered from an external source to allow them to express a new trait, in this case antibiotic resistance. In is experiment foreign DNA is inserted into Escherichia coli in order to alter its phenotype. The goal of the experiment is to transform E. coli with pGLO plasmid, which carries a gene for ampicillin resistance, and determine the transformation efficiency. The bacteria are transformed by a combination of calcium chloride and heat shock. When the bacteria are incubated on ice, the fluid cell membrane is slowed and then the heat shock

One of the more important proteins residing in E. coli is DHFR. This is an enzyme that catalyzes the reduction of dihy­drofolate to tetrahydrofolate in cells5. Since nucleic and amino acid synthesis is affected by the amount of tetrahydrofolate present, DHFR has a direct impact on all actively dividing and growing cells5. This plays a vital role in antibiotics, as having the ability to target the enzyme which controls the production of these new cells would allow for the control of the bacteria. By analyzing DHFR, researchers identified that parallel populations of DHFR evolved and acquired similar mutations in a similar order, implying some sort of evolutionary pathway to antibiotic resistance1. Additionally, many of the mutations were observed near the promotor, and it was calculated that the mutations were most likely not due to chance. This leads to a better understanding of the possible pathways of mutation, which allows scientists to circumvent antibiotic resistance and develop novel

Flues, colds, and diseases flow in and out through all seasons of the year. The illnesses caused many patients to go to the doctors and to get help. In return, the patients will likely get antibiotics prescribed by the doctors. Antibiotics are drugs or a type of medicine that will prevent or inhibit bacteria which is causing the infection. Many people think that antibiotics can completely cure their infection by taking them, but many people do not realize the importance of antibiotic resistance and the evolution of bacteria.

Escherichia Coli, a gram-negative bacillus, is a highly resilient and adaptive species of bacteria found in the intestinal track of mammals along with the natural flora. Within the intestinal track, E. coli has the opportunity to absorb the needed glucose in order to sustain its metabolism. But, evolutionally adaptations have also enabled this pathogen to acquire energy in the absence of glucose, via an induction operon called the lac operon. Regulated at the DNA level, the lac operon is involved in lactose catabolism, uptake and utilization in order to maintain the needed energy to sustain life. The lac operon is composed

I certainly remember sitting in high school biology class and reaching the point in the year when microbial and bacterial genetics and replication is covered. That topic was always capped with the unfortunate fact that a unnerving amount of diseases, whether they be bacterial, fungal, parasitic, and on the rare occasion, viral, are becoming resistant to the commonplace pharmaceuticals used to remedy them. Disease such as tuberculosis, MRSA, gonorrhea, and CDIFF, that have proven to be fatal, have a new trick up their molecular sleeve to further bring harm to patients everywhere. They have grown resistant to their typical medicines – usually antibiotics – making the disease harder to get treat, get rid of, and prevent from spreading.

Polymyxin B1 (PMB1) is a small antimicrobial lipopeptide first derived from the bacterial species Bacilus Polymyxa in 1947[25, 29, 189]. It’s structure is made up of a cyclic polypeptide ring and a fatty acid tail with sequence: DabC-Thr-Leu-DPhe-Dab-DabC-Dab-Thr-Dab-OC9H17. Some of the residues forming the peptide segments are irregular amino acids such as D-Phenylalanine and α, γ-Diamino Butyric acid (DAB). DAB amino acids carry a charge of +1, and with five DABs present this gives the cationic peptide a total charge of +5 [34]. PMB1 is known to be highly potent and is selective principally to gram-ve bacteria, it is effective against all but the Proteus group [190]. It has been shown to successfully treat infections caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, with only limited confirmation of resistant strains developing [25, 191-193]. It has been referred to as a “last hope” antibiotic, due to it’s potency and resilience against resistance [193]. It also possesses the unconventional trait (among AMPs) of showing anti-endotoxin activity, meaning it has

Bacterial Pathogens have been developing resistance to antibiotic treatment soon after these drugs were developed. Mutations in the genes of the bacteria allow it to survive despite being exposed to the medications designed to kill them. Through directional selection, the bell curve is shifted to a phenotype that is designed to survive in harsh conditions that would normally kill them.

conserved SET domain required for their full catalytic activity (Dehe et al 2015). These family of proteins

Antibiotic resistant pathogens have evolved various mechanisms to evade antibiotic action. These include preventing the antibiotic from binding or entering it, modifying the binding site of the antibiotic or producing an enzyme that deactivates the antibiotic. Therefore it has become crucial to be able to design new antimicrobial substances that can overcome these existing antibiotic- resistant pathogens. [3]

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a problem so serious that "it threatens the achievements of modern medicine",3 and has developed faster than new antimicrobial agents coming to the market despite preventive efforts such as prudent use of available antibiotics,5 exemplifying the urgent need for additional research in this field. Antimicrobial resistance is common among organisms responsible for widespread and life-threatening disorders such as sepsis, bacteremia, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, bone and respiratory disorders. Over the past few years, antimicrobial resistance has significantly increased among gram-negatives such as Escherichia coli6,7 (E. coli), Klebsiella pneumoniae8 (K. pneumoniae) and gram-positives such as Enterococcus

The IM is a phospholipid bilayer that contains a conserved set of proteins required for energy production, lipid biosynthesis, protein secretion and transport. In E. coli, the principal phospholipids are phosphatidyl ethanolamine and phosphatidyl glycerol, as well as phosphatidyl serine and cardiolipin in lower quantities. Other minor lipids include polyisoprenoid carriers involved in the translocation of activated sugar-intermediates needed for envelope biogenesis. The specific proteins located in the inner membrane reflect the context that bacteria experience at a certain time period, and the composition can change accordingly in order to secure available energy required for the fulfillment of different cell functions under different conditions (Schwechheimer, 2015) (Silhavy, 2010).

Resistance to β-lactams is easy for bacteria as all β-lactams shared the same mode of action, which is the inhibition of bacterial cell wall synthesis by forming stable covalent adducts with the active site serine residues of penicillin binding proteins (PBPs). The PBPS are often divided into two partitions; the high molecular weight PBPs (HMW-PBPs) and the low-molecular weight PBPs (LMW-PBPs). The HMW-PBPs are further divided in two classes, A and B, while the LMW-PBPs are divided in four subclasses based on their tertiary structures. Figure 2 shows the reactions between natural substrates, β lactams and transition state analogs with the

In this experiment we are testing what is required for E. coli to successfully grow on LB (Luria Broth) plates with ampicillin and determining if any genetic transformation has occurred. By combining +pGLO LB and ampicillin we should get an ampicillin resistant gene and by using –pGLO we should create a non-genetic resistant bacteria. The pGLO plasmid has the GFP (green fluorescent protein) gene and the gene that allows the plasmid to be resistant to the antibiotic ampicillin. The most important part of this experiment is the “heat shock treatment” because the E. coli membrane becomes permeable and increases the competency of the

Salmonella enterica originally could not breakdown lactose and use it to meet energetic needs. However, recent strains isolated from food poisoning outbreaks have revealed that certain strains can in fact breakdown lactose and have been coined lactose-fermenting (Lac+) strains. S. enterica has always naturally contained parts of the lac operon that is found in other bacteria such as E. coli, but it has never been functional and active until recent. The goal of this study was to identify what was necessary for S. enterica to be a Lac+ strain, the researchers did so by isolating an examining 13 different strains of Lac+ S. enterica and comparing it to other enterica bacteria. The researchers discovered that all S. enterica genomes contain functional lacI, lacZ, and lacY genes. But the lacA gene