Terrible news. Just terrible. Urgent issue (antibiotic resistant bacteria hits USA!)

Cool! I have yet to read anything about this issue that does not sound like the coming of the apocalypse. I look forward to the updates if you can do that.

See Monday, May 29, 2017 New York Times article, Proposed Cuts Alarm Bioterrorism Experts : 'They're Just Gutting Things ' by Emily Baumgaertner.The New York Times is pro military spending and they never slant a story as indicating military contracts are corrupt, but the article couldn't help but notice that Americans are not "safe" under the Trump budget as it relates to deadly pathogens.The various and specific cuts are jaw dropping .I feel like we are always backtracking on research budgets.I blame the Democrats more than Trump, because they don't make funding increases a priority, and even if there are some slight increases ( however rare as rare gets to see an actual yearly increase ), it doesn't keep up with inflation .It was the Republican Senator Arlen Spector, in the 1990s, who last made actual funding increases a priority. He helped bring about a doubling of the NIH budget from 1996 to 2003, as part of his mid 1990s plan.The budget is presently LOWER than the 2003 high, and before Trump gets his 18% cut.We need a real opposition party.Do we all have to drop like flies before it happens?

Got back from the conference yesterday and not a whole lot to report. Most of my time was spent on lectures and posters on other subjects, but I really didn't see anything on a superbug that was resistant to all known antibiotics. What I did see was tons of posters on new antibiotics that were active against bugs that had gained resistance to other antibiotics.In other news, I attended an interesting symposium on the coevolution of microbiomes and their hosts. As it turns out, the phylogeny of gut bacteria follows the phylogeny of their hosts, especially when there is enough evolutionary distance between species to produce a strong phylogenetic signal. On top of that, transferring the gut bacteria from one species into another can cause disease or developmental issues, at least in the insect gut models that were presented.

So what happens when a bug eats another bug? Do the bacteria get destroyed before becoming part of the eater's stomach biota ? Am I saying the question right? This is the bacteria that humans get from the mothers vagina during birth, right? Something that a person needs as part of their internal microbiota?I never understood this issue.I heard recently that a child benefits greatly to be around a dog in the early years. All the licking helps to create a resistance to bacteria, and the benefit comes only (?) when exposed in the early years.Hear anything about phages (phago in Greek has to do with eating and SAR means flesh,so sarcophagus means flesh eater ) ?Flesh eaters? They eat bacteria, right?Any mouth wash news?

Since they tend to be about the same size that isn't what usually happens. Instead, bacteria can release what are called bacteriocins which can cause surrounding bacteria to die and then break apart. The bacteria then soak up the resulting detritus. That is also a very interesting lecture that I attended. As it turns out, vaginal and caesarean birth can have a big impact on the baby's gut flora. It does appear that vaginal birth allows the mother to seed the baby's gut flora. A caesarean birth results in a gut flora that has different ratios of standard bacterial groups which begins to resemble baby's from natural births after about a year. I remember something about that, but it is a bit murkier. I think it has something to do with "training" T-cells, if my faulty memory is correct. There were posters and talks on phage, but I didn't attend any of those. I don't remember anything on mouthwash.

So the bacteria commonly get killed and then detritus gets soaked up by the host's bacteria?I am going to have to ask what happens when the invading bacteria survive the invasion of the host. And how common is an invasion where the invasive bacterium survives.How does this relate to evolution and the progressive changes in species?

Can you please explain the last paragraph of post 33.This is the issue of "good bacteria " getting taken into custody of the host's gut then passed on to offspring for all future generations.Are you saying that the typical event of the custody transfer ( for lack of a better description ) is a bad result in action.?Just like the "bad mutations " of Neo Darwinian theory greatly outnumbering the beneficial ones?What are the essential developments in this developing story?This was a great and quite recent thing - good bacteria (with its own DNA independent of the host of the stomach that houses all the various bacteria ) that was constantly being added to the host's gut THEN passed on to offspring!What exactly was "new" before (the lecture you just heard ) and then your description of what is "newer" (post lecture things ) now?The next thing you learn will be the "newest" so please keep us updated.Thanks. Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

I'm not sure that you can say that Christian nations make medical discoveries.That's a strange claim. Edited by Larni, : No reason given.

This is true in some cases. In other cases, it is disease-causing bacteria that kill off the host flora and cause an infection. In other cases, the host flora just outcompetes any disease-causing bacteria or bacteria from other sources.This is also why people can come down with serious infections after taking antibiotics, which happens to be research I am very familiar with. One of the prime examples is Clostridium difficile colitis which often occurs after a patient takes antibiotics and wipes out their normal flora. C. diff moves in and produces a serious and sometimes chronic and recurring infection. A lot of effort is being put into finding antibiotics that do a better job of preserving a patient's normal flora to prevent these types of opportunistic infections. Evolution in the host can cause the bacteria's environment to change, and the bacteria evolve to that new environment. This process can also occur in the other direction. This process is broadly termed "co-evolution".One of the interesting presentations I saw was how this type of co-evolution can aid in speciation. They cross bred two wasp species and saw that the hybrid larvae were not as viable as the larvae from intraspecies breeding. What they found is that the gut flora inherited from the mother was not compatible with the hybrid larvae and caused them to be less fit than larvae from intraspecies breeding. Their gut flora had evolved with each species to the point that they were not as compatible with the other species.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

The transfer of maternal flora to child is usually considered a good thing. I am not up on all of the literature in that specific field, so I can't confidently answer that question. However, research presented at meetings is usually the latest and newest stuff, so I can pass that on with hopes that it can answer your question.In the previous study I talked about dealing with the natural v. caesarean births, part of that study was comparing the bacterial genomes found in the mother and child. They were able to track specific lineages of bacteria by measuring single nucleotide polymorphisms (i.e. SNP, or "snips"). Using this information they were able to demonstrate the age at which mother's flora appeared in the baby's gut. With caesarean delivery the mother's flora began appearing at about 1 year, but with natural child birth the mother's flora appeared right after birth.This type of specific DNA information is probably the latest development in this type of research. They are able to screen vast amounts DNA and RNA to characterize and track complex communities of bacteria. A good analogy is the advancement of CPU speeds over the last 30 years. The ability to produce genetic data has somewhat followed Moore's law. It took a decade to sequence the first human genome, but now a single human genome can be sequenced in a matter of weeks (although with somewhat less coverage and accuracy compared to the human genome project). To use the computer analogy again, they have faster computers, and they have learned how to make multiple faster computers work in parallel with each other.

Thanks for bringing back the info. New antibiotics is at least some good news.

The bad news is that new antibiotics are about $2-3k for a full round, at least here in the US.