Akhila Sonti
Author: University of Houston
Date published: December 22, 2013
Summary:
A university of Houston biologist hopes to one day be able to isolate a bacterial pathogen(bacteria that cause bacterial infection, especially in humans) and predict the probability that it will become resistant to an antibiotic. Associate professor Timothy Cooper and his team are studying the causes and consequences of bacterial evolution because better understanding of the physiological and genetic bases of evolution is important in medicine (vaccine and antibiotic design) and biotechnology.“By studying how generations of bacteria evolve over time, we are learning ways to predict the outcome of the changes and to understand what drives the differences in the way strains of bacteria evolve," Cooper said. The study of bacterial evolution will impact medical care by making them able to identify and predict the evolutionary paths of bacteria and the refinements in the adaptations that they form. Certain "winners" or "losers" among the many variants in the bacterial populations are determined by their ability to evolve in that they are either improved or become extinct. Being able to predict these "winners" and "losers" gives some predictability to evolution in bacteria which can help predict things like antibiotic resistance which is very helpful and useful in the field of medicine with vaccine and antibiotic design. Cooper's research with the evolvability of bacteria began with E.Coli in with the first petri dish of fast growing bacteria. His team grew the initial bacteria in a petri dish and took a sample of it to grow in a test tube with fresh media. They continued that same process day after day with the bacterial population growing and sample being taken from each test tube. Now, Cooper has a set experimental population that evolved for more than 7000 generations (experimentally). This allowed him to study the evolution of the bacteria over this period of time and track back what had happened to the strain of bacteria overtime. In this experiment a sample of each evolving population is frozen to create a living fossil record every 500 generations which is actually every two months. This allows the biologists to compare the past and future populations which involves genome sequencing because as the populations evolve, genetic changes occur and genome sequencing is the way to look at those changes. Direct study of the phenomenon of evolvability showed how big of an impact it has on evolution and the natural population.
URL: http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/fort_bend/news/uh-biologist-hopes-to-predict-antibiotic-resistance/article_9af0fffc-6906-11e3-b209-001a4bcf887a.html
Relevance:
In class we talked about and studied about how evolution of bacteria and bacteria developing resistance towards antibiotics was becoming a major issue in the field of medicine and vaccine design. This article was all about that and the biologists were trying to figure out, as many other biologists did, the evolution of bacteria to help them design antibiotics and vaccines that will actually work and will be killing the bacteria so that they are useful in the field of medicine. We also learned that by studying the fossils of any species, we can learn how they evolved over time into the species that they are now and what changes occured in each generation that led to the certain structure or adaptations that the organism possesses now. In this article they made live fossils of bacteria by freezing the old samples and compared the old and new to see how it evolved. Genome sequencing, as we learned, is the way to recognize changes or mutations in an organism's DNA sequence and theses biologists used this process to see how the bacteria evolved over time. Everything mentioned in this article is connected to what we have learned in class and ties back to the main goal of this study and experiment; being able to predict the evolutionary biology of bacteria to make useful vaccines and antibiotics.
Summary:
A university of Houston biologist hopes to one day be able to isolate a bacterial pathogen(bacteria that cause bacterial infection, especially in humans) and predict the probability that it will become resistant to an antibiotic. Associate professor Timothy Cooper and his team are studying the causes and consequences of bacterial evolution because better understanding of the physiological and genetic bases of evolution is important in medicine (vaccine and antibiotic design) and biotechnology.“By studying how generations of bacteria evolve over time, we are learning ways to predict the outcome of the changes and to understand what drives the differences in the way strains of bacteria evolve," Cooper said. The study of bacterial evolution will impact medical care by making them able to identify and predict the evolutionary paths of bacteria and the refinements in the adaptations that they form. Certain "winners" or "losers" among the many variants in the bacterial populations are determined by their ability to evolve in that they are either improved or become extinct. Being able to predict these "winners" and "losers" gives some predictability to evolution in bacteria which can help predict things like antibiotic resistance which is very helpful and useful in the field of medicine with vaccine and antibiotic design. Cooper's research with the evolvability of bacteria began with E.Coli in with the first petri dish of fast growing bacteria. His team grew the initial bacteria in a petri dish and took a sample of it to grow in a test tube with fresh media. They continued that same process day after day with the bacterial population growing and sample being taken from each test tube. Now, Cooper has a set experimental population that evolved for more than 7000 generations (experimentally). This allowed him to study the evolution of the bacteria over this period of time and track back what had happened to the strain of bacteria overtime. In this experiment a sample of each evolving population is frozen to create a living fossil record every 500 generations which is actually every two months. This allows the biologists to compare the past and future populations which involves genome sequencing because as the populations evolve, genetic changes occur and genome sequencing is the way to look at those changes. Direct study of the phenomenon of evolvability showed how big of an impact it has on evolution and the natural population.
URL: http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/fort_bend/news/uh-biologist-hopes-to-predict-antibiotic-resistance/article_9af0fffc-6906-11e3-b209-001a4bcf887a.html
Relevance:
In class we talked about and studied about how evolution of bacteria and bacteria developing resistance towards antibiotics was becoming a major issue in the field of medicine and vaccine design. This article was all about that and the biologists were trying to figure out, as many other biologists did, the evolution of bacteria to help them design antibiotics and vaccines that will actually work and will be killing the bacteria so that they are useful in the field of medicine. We also learned that by studying the fossils of any species, we can learn how they evolved over time into the species that they are now and what changes occured in each generation that led to the certain structure or adaptations that the organism possesses now. In this article they made live fossils of bacteria by freezing the old samples and compared the old and new to see how it evolved. Genome sequencing, as we learned, is the way to recognize changes or mutations in an organism's DNA sequence and theses biologists used this process to see how the bacteria evolved over time. Everything mentioned in this article is connected to what we have learned in class and ties back to the main goal of this study and experiment; being able to predict the evolutionary biology of bacteria to make useful vaccines and antibiotics.
Instead of just determing the patterns of the bacteria, could the scientists produce an antibiotic that works against ALL of the bacteria (or at least most of the bacteria)? Scientist can use the "winner" bacteria and determine why they did not die. With this information, researchers can engineer a way to kill the bacteria.
ReplyDeleteNo, because to produce that kind of an antibiotic, the scientists still need to know the evolutionary patterns of the bacteria, so that all of them die. And if the antibiotic that you are suggesting killed ALL of the bacteria like you said, then there would be no "winner" bacteria.
ReplyDeleteHow are scientists able to be a hundred percent sure? What kind of factors are scientists considering that lead them to their evolutionary conclusions?
ReplyDelete