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antibiotic resistance

Researchers shed light on how horizontal gene transfer triggers antibiotic resistance

At ScienceDaily: "Yi's experiments were designed to test this possible pathway that explains how different pathogens actually get resistance from environmental species," You said. "And he demonstrated that not only is this possible, it's also very likely." Read More ›

James Tour on the practical side of intelligent design

Luskin: James Tour hopes that his nanodrills will find a place in future therapies to treat problems like antibiotic resistance and tumors. At the core of his research is using our own intelligence to create therapies that outsmart antibiotic resistance—in other words, to beat evolution with intelligent design. Read More ›

Watching microorganisms bend “the rules” of evolution

Researchers: “It was previously thought that the only genes that could spread through a population were those that caused a benefit 'right now' (in the environment that the population is experiencing at that point in time).” That’s Darwinism. And Darwinism is becoming comprehensively out of date. Read More ›

Bacteria are smarter than we think

At Wired: As they cleared paths of food, the E.coli tended to move toward unexplored, broth-rich areas, which ultimately helped them evacuate the maze. It took about 10 hours for about 1 percent of the multiple generations of bacteria to collectively solve the puzzle. That may not sound fast, but it’s five times faster than if the organisms had just been swimming around randomly, says Phan. Read More ›

Bacteria harpoon DNA from their environment, to fight antibiotics

Wait. What does this story remind us of? Oh yes, recently a writer at The Atlantic went so far as to express doubt about the claim of a Darwin-in-the-schools lobbyist that everyone needs to buy into their approach to evolution if we want to understand superbugs. Read More ›

“Jumping genes” threaten the world’s antibiotics

Does anyone remember when antibiotic resistance was proof of Darwinism? Antibiotic resistance was Evolution. And Evolution was not non-Darwinian stuff like horizontal gene transfer/jumping genes. Welcome to post-Darwin science. Read More ›

Bacteria make complex antibiotics that give chemists “cold sweats”

From Josh Bloom at American Council for Science and Health: I recently wrote about three of the deadly neurotoxins being produced by cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae) during an ongoing algae bloom in South Florida (See Florida’s Deadly Algae Bloom – Why Is It So Dangerous?). The toxins range from structurally simple and easy for organic chemists to synthesize in the lab to moderately complex and not simple at all. But there are numerous examples of plants, marine organisms, and bacteria that easily biosynthesize molecules that are so complex and difficult to make synthetically that chemistry grad students and post-docs who were given the unenviable task of doing so are probably still waking up in cold sweats thinking about what they Read More ›