• Question: How do we beat bacteria?

    Asked by to Daren, Lynne, Phillip, Simon on 18 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Daren Fearon

      Daren Fearon answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      We can beat bacteria by making drugs that target proteins that they need to survive and spread. Ideally we want to target proteins that are unique to the bacteria so they don’t harm any people that take the drugs. Bacteria reproduce very rapidly and are quite good at developing resistance to drugs. In fact some kind of bacterial resistance has been discovered for every kind of antibiotic we currently have! This is why finding new drugs is so important. We also need to look at how bacteria develop resistance and develop drugs which can prevent this from happening.

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