A4-month-old infant had been running a moderate fever for36 hours, and a nervous mother made a call to her pediatrician.Examination and tests revealed no outward signs of infectionor cause of the fever. The anxious mother wanted a prescription for antibiotics, but the pediatrician recommended watching the infant for two days before making a decision. He explained that decades of rampant use of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture has caused a global surge in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, drastically reducing the effectiveness of antibiotic therapy for infections. He pointed out that bacteria can exchange antibiotic resistance traits and that many pathogenic strains are now resistant to several antibiotics. The mother wasnot placated by these explanations and insisted that her baby receive antibiotics immediately. This situation raises several issues. Question: If the infant was given antibiotics, how might this have contributed to the production of resistant bacteria?
Genetic Recombination
Recombination is crucial to this process because it allows genes to be reassorted into diverse combinations. Genetic recombination is the process of combining genetic components from two different origins into a single unit. In prokaryotes, genetic recombination takes place by the unilateral transfer of deoxyribonucleic acid. It includes transduction, transformation, and conjugation. The genetic exchange occurring between homologous deoxyribonucleic acid sequences (DNA) from two different sources is termed general recombination. For this to happen, an identical sequence of the two recombining molecules is required. The process of genetic exchange which occurs in eukaryotes during sexual reproduction such as meiosis is an example of this type of genetic recombination.
Microbial Genetics
Genes are the functional units of heredity. They transfer characteristic information from parents to the offspring.
A4-month-old infant had been running a moderate fever for
36 hours, and a nervous mother made a call to her pediatrician.
Examination and tests revealed no outward signs of infection
or cause of the fever. The anxious mother wanted a prescription for antibiotics, but the pediatrician recommended watching the infant for two days before making a decision. He explained that decades of rampant use of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture has caused a global surge in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, drastically reducing the effectiveness of antibiotic therapy for infections. He pointed out that bacteria can exchange antibiotic resistance traits and that many pathogenic strains are now resistant to several antibiotics. The mother was
not placated by these explanations and insisted that her baby receive antibiotics immediately. This situation raises several issues.
Question: If the infant was given antibiotics, how might this have contributed to the production of resistant bacteria?
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