Reservoirs, Interactions and Antibiotic Resistant Genes

Overview

Enthusiasm after discovery of antibiotics and their use in clinical practice led to presumption that problems ofbacterial infections will be soon resolved and forgotten and attention will be turned to other serious problems, suchas viral infections or neoplastic diseases. However, instead of disappearance of bacterial infections, bacterialpathogens become more resistant to many antibiotics. The ability of bacterial strains to acquire resistance genesfrom other bacteria, even of different species, causes increasing stability of resistance of bacteria. Transferableelements - resistance genes - often interact and create changed structures; this enables to preserve, stabilize, or underspecial conditions, transfer resistance genes. Transferable elements include plasmids, transposons, integrons andgene cassettes. Conjugation of bacteria, transduction by bacteriophages and transformation are the mechanisms bywhich these elements are transferred. A very significant property of transferable, mobilisable and transposablegenetic systems of resistance is their stability and ability to adapt to new hosts. They do not lose it in the absenceof antibiotics. The generally pessimistic view on future antibacterial chemotherapy should be a challenge to preventthe existence and spread of resistant strains of bacteria. It is much simpler and more convenient than „quench thefire“ later. Best scheme is to stop resistance before it starts.

Key words:
reservoirs, interaction, antibiotic resistance, transfer resistance genes.