Why is Antibiotic resistance being taught with evolution?

Antibiotic in gene cloning?

If antibiotic resistance is added to the gene being cloned, antibiotics can be used to isolate the transformed bacteria (ones with the gene being cloned) by killing off all non-transformed bacteria, that don't have the antibiotic resistance. There is a chance that the non-transformed bacteria can mutate to develop antibiotic resistance.

Is antibiotic resistance proof of evolution?

When a population of bacteria is bombarded with antibiotics, the 'weak' ones will die. The ones with some resistance built in will survive, and divide to form a new population of copies of themselves, or a resistant population. This in itself is survival of the fittest in a very pure form.

How do antibiotic resistant bacteria come about?

This term is misleading. The antibiotic "selects" bacteria that are not affected by it. If a person will grow bacteria on a petri dish and add an antibiotic to it, some bacteria may live and grow. This is actually a form of natural selection. The ones that will grow are resistance to the antibiotic. They have some way of not being affected. If a person takes a colony from the plate that has this resistance and grows it on another plate and add the antibiotic, all on the plate will be resistant.

Is evolution currently being taught in schools?

Yes, it is. Kids and others learn about ancestors such as homo erectus and such. Ardi is yet to be put in the history books

What can you do to prevent the problem of antibiotic resistance get worse?

You can stop using antibiotics and only use them for absolutely neccicary things. This prevents the bacteria from being acustomed with the antibiotics and becoming immune.

Are antibiotics being overused?

This is a very complicated question but yes, antibiotics are being used in high frequency in our society and at times, they are prescribed wrongly. Antibiotics do not treat viral infections and the common cold or flu is viral - but doctors write a prescription because they diagnosed it wrong or because the patient is pressuring the doctor for a antibiotic. This leads to bacterial resistance to that specific antibiotic and in some cases, resistance to the entire class of that antibiotic. So if you take amoxicillin wrongly and bacteria becomes resistant, it becomes resistant to amoxicillin and all penicillin class of antibiotics. This is why we are seeing the rise of highly resistant strains of bacteria in this world such as VRSA (Vancomycin resistant) or MRSA (Methicillin resistant) bacterial strains.

Is antibiotic resistance irreversible?

In my opinion, a simple answer to this would be yes. By using antibiotics or actively trying to kill bacteria, you are actively putting a selective process on that bacterial culture. When an antibiotic is first in use in a clinical setting, generally most (>99%) of the bacteria are susceptible to the antibiotic and therefore will die - however a very small number will have a slight variation (the range of resistance mechanisms are wide and diverse - from enzymes that can break the antibiotic down - to efflux pumps in the membrane that can actively pump the antibiotic out of the cell) that will allow them to survive. This surviving "resistant strain" will then continue to grow and spread as the susceptible strain is continually selected against by the continued use of that antibiotic. This eventually leads to the resistant strain dominating the overall community, and so antibiotic resistance has become prevalent. There are many type of antibiotic that act to kill bacteria in a variety of ways (penicillins break down bacterial cell walls, tetracyclines inhibit protein synthesis), so in the past when bacteria have become resistant to one type of antibiotic, we simply treated them with another type. The difficulty of this is that it means we have continually selected for bacteria that are resistant to more and more types of antibiotic, leading to MDR (multi-drug resistance). With a limited number of antibiotics available and the number of new antibiotics being discovered annually having decreased over the last decade, these MDRs are causing infections that are very difficult to treat. As such, coming back to the question, no antibiotic resistance cannot be reversed because it is a natural for bacteria to adapt and evolve antibiotic resistance when antibiotic use in clinical settings provide a perfect selection process. However, its not all doom and gloom. Many biotech and pharmaceutical companies have now realised that the future of antibiotics is to intelligently design molecules (drugs) that target antibiotic resistance, making these strains susceptible again, or even to develop drugs that bacteria can't gain resistance to due to their design. P.S Antibiotic Resistance has also been observed in bacterial cultures that have been grown from soil samples obtained from permafrost thousands of years old (D'Costa et al 2011). Therefore antibiotic resistance has been present in numerous bacterial species well before humans started using antibiotics in a clinical setting. A link to the D'Costa et al article can be found in related links.

Should evolution and creationism be taught side by side in school?

Most certainly not side-by-side. That would imply that they are equivalent notions. Evolution, however, is a scientific theory, and creationism is religious myth. Evolution belongs in biology classes, creationism in something like comparative religion courses.

How can resistance to DDT evolve in mosquitoes?

It works in this case just as it does in resistance to antibiotics. When the environment is changed, those living in it will be either affected or not. Some bacteria or mosquitoes will not be affected and some will. The affected ones will die and the others will not. Those that don't die will have genes that allow this to happen for them. They will pass those genes on to their offspring. Those offspring will also be resistance to what every pesticide or antibiotic being used to kill them. You are seeing actual natural selection and evolution at work. Penicillin was used in WW2 in 1943. Today, there are bacteria that are resistant to every antibiotic that we have. Some are resistant to 23. Unless the insecticide kills every mosquito, the ones that survive will grow in numbers and we will have to find something else. The most we usually can hope for is just to be able to control the numbers.

What causes the mutant form of disease-causing bacteria to become predominant?

The forces that affect bacteria population are competition, mutation and selection, just like any other population affected by the theory of evolution. In a large population of bacteria, some individuals will be mutated to have resistance to antibiotic drugs (or any other drug). This is a disadvantage to the individual as long as there is no antibiotic drug in the surroundings. In this case there is mutation but no selection. When an antibiotic drug is given to a patient, selection is being done in the evolutionary aspect of the bacteria. Only the drug-resistant mutants survive, since the selection does not affect them. All the non-mutant bacteria die; the mutants have no competition, and can flourish undisturbed.

What did the religious right object to in US culture and politics and what steps did it take to try to try to change things?

The religious right in the US objected to the evolution being taught in schools and sexual education being taught to children. To try and change things the religious right capitalized on the media by making headlines and putting out print ads.

Is the holocaust being taught?

To educate kids about the horrors of war. To help prevent it from happening again.