In: Biology
Describe a mechanism that can lead to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains?
Question
The bacteria could become resistant to the antibiotics by one of the following mechanism :
I. Enzymatic degradation of the antibacterial drugs. The bacteria have several enzymes that have the ability to degrade the structure of antibiotics so that it become ineffective.
II. The bacteria have the ability to mutate it's structure that lead to the change in the structure of bacterial proteins that are the antibacterial targets.
III. The bacteria also mutate it's plasma membrane structure so that its permeability to the antibiotics will get changed and antibiotic is not able to enter in the cell.
IV. In some cases, the bacteria increases the activity of efflux proteins that expel the antibiotics that try to enter in the cell.