Question: Do you feel the antibiotics could change in the future to adapt with the micro-organisms to increase the chance of killing them?

Darren Braddick answered on 16 Jun 2011:

Hi carrietrewern,

Another ace question! OK, well antibiotics will never adapt themselves… but some bacteria make antibiotics, and they can sometimes make new ones, or change what they have.At the moment the majority of mankind’s drugs have been synthetic (or fake) versions of existing drugs, from bacterial species, that we have changed with chemistry to make them better.

In order to kill microorganisms, we do need new antibiotics. This might come from existing sources, like these bacteria which make their own antibiotics, or they might be designed by very intelligent science. We can get amazing structures of proteins to very fine detail, and then use computers to ‘fit’ drug shapes into them. These proteins might then bind the antibiotics and stop working – which could be used to kill bacteria.

Unfortunately, most antibiotics we use can fail with some bacterial species, because the genetic information for resistance is very very easy to transport. Bacterial species in hospitals, for example, have been shown to trade resistance genes! So if we do get new antibiotics, a very important thing is to use them with respect, to make them last longer!

I hope this answers your question 🙂

Daz