Antibiotic Resistance
This term describes a bacterium’s ability to survive and continue reproducing even in the presence of an antibiotic.
What is antibiotic resistance?
This process explains how traits that help organisms survive become more common over generations.
What is natural selection?
This is a virus that infects bacteria.
What is a bacteriophage?
This common misuse of antibiotics can speed up the evolution of resistant bacteria by killing only the weakest bacteria.
What is not finishing a full course of antibiotics?
This genetic difference among bacteria increases the chance that some will survive antibiotic treatment.
What is variation?
Bacteriophages kill bacteria by__________
What is injecting their genetic material into them?
These bacteria survive antibiotic treatment and pass their resistant traits to future generations.
What are antibiotic-resistant bacteria?
This is one reason why bacteria evolve faster than humans.
What is because they reproduce very quickly?
Unlike antibiotics, bacteriophages usually affect only this type of organism.
What are specific bacteria?
This process explains how bacteria with resistance genes become more common in a population over time.
What is natural selection?
In the presence of antibiotics, this trait gives some bacteria a survival advantage.
What is antibiotic resistance?
Name one reason bacteriophages are being studied as alternatives to antibiotics.
What is they can target specific harmful bacteria?
Name one reason why antibiotic resistance is considered a global public health problem.
infections become harder to treat or antibiotics become less effective
This reason best explains why antibiotics do not cause resistance, but instead select for it.
What is that resistant bacteria already exist in the population?
This is a potential advantage of using bacteriophages in the fight against antibiotic resistance.
What is that bacteria are less likely to develop resistance quickly?