How Do Bacteria Gain Antibiotic Resistance

How Does Bacteria Gain Antibiotic Resistance? Antibiotic resistance can only occur when the bacteria changes in some way that reduces the effectiveness of drugs or chemicals designed to cure or prevent infections from further expanding in the body. With resistance, that’s exactly what these forms of bacteria are doing, multiplying and spreading or infecting others. The bacteria’s main goal is to survive and multiply in the environment they were introduced to so introducing an antibiotic will cause the bacteria to somehow adapt to this drug and overcome its effects or simply move out to stay alive. “Bacteria can do this through several different mechanisms. Some bacteria develop the ability to neutralize the antibiotic before it can do harm, others can rapidly pump the antibiotic out, and still others can change the antibiotic attack site so it cannot affect the function of the bacteria.” (Why are bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics?). …show more content…
Sometimes one of the bacteria may survive because it has the ability to neutralize the effect of the antibiotic; that one bacterium can then multiply and replace all the bacteria that were killed off creating a new large group of antibiotic resilient bacteria. Bacteria that was once susceptible to an antibiotic can gain a resilience property to that specific antibiotic through mutation of their genetic material or by acquiring pieces of DNA that code for the resistance properties from other bacteria they may have mutated previously to that antibiotic and already adapted resistance or is just genetically immune. This means that bacteria can become resistant to many antimicrobial agents because of the transfer of one piece of DNA. “Exposure to antibiotics therefore provides selective pressure, which makes the surviving bacteria more likely to be resistant.” (Why are bacteria becoming resistant to