Science: Study Reveals New Survival Strategy for Bacteria Exposed to Antibiotics

Researchers have uncovered a new way that some bacteria survive when under siege by antibiotics. This survival mechanism is fundamentally different from other known bacterial strategies. Understanding it may be useful for designing drugs that target hard-to-treat bacterial strains such as drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), an increasingly urgent public health problem. The study is based on Mycobacterium smegmatis—a cousin of the microbe that causes TB—and its response to the TB drug isoniazid. .

By AAAS, USA.

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