Antibiotic Resistance

Bacterial mechanisms of drug resistance operate at sequential lines of defense tackling drug at entry, accumulation, target binding, or downstream toxicity. These mechanisms are encoded by genomic changes ranging in scale from point mutations, through assembly of preexisting genetic elements, to horizontal import of genes from the environment. A many-to-many relationship prevails between resistance mechanisms and the spectrum of genetic changes encoding them. Bacterial mechanisms of drug resistance operate at sequential lines of defense tackling drug at entry, accumulation, target binding, or downstream toxicity. These mechanisms are encoded by genomic changes ranging in scale from point mutations, through assembly of preexisting genetic elements to horizontal import of genes from the environment. A many-to-many relationship prevails between resistance mechanisms and the spectrum of genetic changes encoding them.