{"id":125054,"date":"2021-07-16T20:22:27","date_gmt":"2021-07-17T03:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/researchers-shocked-to-discover-bacterial-parasites-behind-rise-of-superbugs"},"modified":"2021-07-16T20:22:27","modified_gmt":"2021-07-17T03:22:27","slug":"researchers-shocked-to-discover-bacterial-parasites-behind-rise-of-superbugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/researchers-shocked-to-discover-bacterial-parasites-behind-rise-of-superbugs","title":{"rendered":"Researchers Shocked to Discover Bacterial Parasites Behind Rise of \u201cSuperbugs\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-shocked-to-discover-bacterial-parasites-behind-rise-of-superbugs.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the first time ever, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine discovered that phages \u2014 tiny viruses that attack bacteria \u2014 are key to initiating rapid bacterial evolution leading to the emergence of treatment-resistant \u201csuperbugs.\u201d The findings were published today in <em>Science Advances<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers showed that, contrary to a dominant theory in the field of evolutionary microbiology, the process of adaptation and diversification in bacterial colonies doesn\u2019t start from a homogenous clonal population. They were shocked to discover that the cause of much of the early adaptation wasn\u2019t random point mutations. Instead, they found that phages, which we normally think of as bacterial parasites, are what gave the winning strains the evolutionary advantage early on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEssentially, a parasite became a weapon,\u201d said senior author Vaughn Cooper, Ph.D., professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Pitt. \u201cPhages endowed the victors with the means of winning. What killed off more sensitive bugs gave the advantage to others.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time ever, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine discovered that phages \u2014 tiny viruses that attack bacteria \u2014 are key to initiating rapid bacterial evolution leading to the emergence of treatment-resistant \u201csuperbugs.\u201d The findings were published today in Science Advances. The researchers showed that, contrary to a dominant theory [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":621,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/621"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}