Antibiotic resistant bacteria are a significant health issue worldwide. Penicill

Question

Antibiotic resistant bacteria are a significant health issue worldwide. Penicillin initially was extremely effective in treating bacterial infections by killing pathogenic bacteria. Today, many bacterial pathogens are resistant and penicillin does not cause significant bacterial cell death.

An explanation of evolutionary change by the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics (IAA) was proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lemarck. Athough the explanation was rejected soon after it was proposed, it remains as an extremely prevalent misconception of evolution. For illustrative purposes, describe the evolutionary change leading to antibiotic resistance using the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Charles Darwin described evolutionary change as descent by modification with natural selection. Describe the evolutionary change leading to antibiotic resistance using the theory of descent by modification with natural selection.  Be sure that your explanations are different and illustrate the principles of each theory.

Explanation / Answer

Evolution is a progressive phenomenon in which one organism originates from pre-existing organisms, over a period of time. Evolution of some species may take a million of years, but sometimes it may vary. Darwin proposed the natural selection theory as the main mechanism of evolution. Darwin’s finches are categorized as the emblems of evolution. Evolution takes place with modifications; this may be a small scale evolution or a large scale evolution.

For example, a species evolves by various types of evolutions; for example, Convergent evolution is one type of evolution, in which one type of species would acquire the characters from another species, if they were living at similar niche.

Natural selection is a process in which definite characteristics are selected over others during the process of evolution. It is a natural and unguided process and it states that traits, which are advantageous to an individual, will help that individual reproduce more successfully, and thus the population will keep traits that are advantageous.

Traits that do not help an individual will likely lead to that individual not reproducing and that trait not showing up in subsequent generations. Darwin’s finches are categorized as the emblems of evolution. Natural selection favors different varieties of species in different islands.

The theory was illustrated by exemplifying different varieties of finches, living in the Galapagos Island. The finches were of various types: seed-eating finches, cactus-eating finches, and insect-eating finches. The finches more or less resembled each other, but developed different mouth structures based on their food habits.

Thus, mutations lead to genetic disorder and gives rise to variations, they are inversion, deletion, transversions, and duplication. They are raw materials of evolution.

For example consider a simple bacterium called E.coli. This bacterium can cause a disease called Traveler's diarrhea. To treat this disease different types of antibiotics have been used. But the bacteria can attain antibiotic resistance and they would not kill by the antibiotics.

E.coli is treated with an antibiotic, then after several generations of their growth showed resistance. This bacterium has achieved the resistance trait through the modification of genes on their genome or acquiring new genes from other resistant species.

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