Transfer Of Traits Among Bacterial Communities Boosts Antibiotic Resistance And Sexual Power: Researcher Uncovered New Secret

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• Date: 24 Nov,2015

Researcher from University of Oxford uncovered new secret of sexual power and antibiotic resistance in bacteria, the concern research published in “Nature Communications”.

Transfer of different bacterial communities leads to depicts type of gene transfer and traits like antibiotic resistance, Researcher says.

'It is well known that bacteria are able to swap little pieces of DNA, which is crucial for them to be able to evolve and adapt to new environments, including responding to antibiotics. It's different to sex in humans, but the effect — swapping genetic material — is similar.” Says: Kevin Foster, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Oxford University and principal investigator of the project

It is well known that sex in bacteria is very rare as ratio only one cell among million swapping DNA.While according to theory any antibiotic resistant traits will divide rapidly and take over bacterial communities.

'What we found was that the missing ingredient was migration. Previous work ignored that these communities are open, and our model shows that this very high immigration rate among bacteria gives a huge opportunity for different microbes to meet and swap DNA, even though it's a rare event when taken in isolation. ‘Said: René Niehus, a DPhil student in the Department of Zoology and lead author of the paper,

Story Source: University of Oxford

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Journal Reference

Rene Niehus, Sara Mitri, Alexander G. Fletcher, Kevin R. Foster. Migration and horizontal gene transfer divide microbial genomes into multiple niches. Nature Communications, 2015; 6: 8924 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9924