A microbe in battle gear
a pathogen that is a common cause of hospital infections may well be able to defend itself against attack by any antibiotic, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Structural and Genomic Information Laboratory at France's National Center for Scientific Research.
The bacterium, Acinetobacter baumannii, was fully susceptible to antibiotics about three decades ago. But over the years, it has acquired drug-resistant genes from other bacterial pathogens like Pseudomonas, Salmonella and Escherichia.
For the study, the research team compared the genomes of two A baumannii strains, one fully susceptible to antibiotics and one highly resistant. The resistant bacterium, present in an epidemic form in several French healthcare facilities, is associated with a mortality of 26 per cent of infected patients.
The group found that the resistant strain has 45 genes coding for drug resistance