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Resistance to Antibiotics

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Many Pathogenic bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics, explain how such adaptations can develop through the process of natural selection. Exam # 25010400
Exam # 25010400

January 17, 2016 kelsey duff

January 17, 2016 kelsey duff

Natural selection is the process that results in adaptation of a population to the biotic (living) and the abiotic (nonliving) environments. In the biotic environment organisms acquire resources through completion, predation, and parasitism. The abiotic environment includes weather conditions, dependent chiefly on temperatues and precipitation.
Directional selection occurs when an extreme phenotype is favored and the distribution curve shifts in that direction. Such a shift can occur when a population is adapting to a changing environment.
Resistance to antibiotics and insecticides are examples of directional selection. The widespread use of antibiotics and insecticides (pesticides) results in populations of bacteria and insects that are resistant to these chemicals. When an antibiotic is administered, some bacteria may survive because they are genetically resistant to the antibiotic. These bacteria are most likely to pass on their genes to the next generation. Result, the number of bacteria keeps in increasing. Drug-resistant strains of bacteria that cause tuberculosis have now become a serious threat to the health of people worldwide.
Because the genes of bacteria are varied, it is likely that there are some bacteria that carry genes which allow them to survive or resist antibiotics, because these genes allow them to survive they are likely to reproduce, more likely to reproduce with other bacteria of their species with the same gene that allows resistance to the antibiotic. This means that more of their offspring will also carry those genes and again reproduce and

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