Question

Bacteria have many ways to survive, including developing mutations that provide them with a resistance to antibiotic medications. The standard practice of doctors is to administer a single antibiotic medication at a time to their patients. However, active infections are sometimes treated with a combination of several antibiotics given simultaneously to reduce the chances of bacteria developing antibiotic resistance. Why would giving multiple antibiotics at once be less likely to create a population of resistant bacteria?


While bacteria may be able to survive the destruction of one of their genes, it is less likely that they would be able to survive the destruction of several genes at the same time.

Most bacteria would not develop all the mutations needed to resist the attack of multiple antibiotics given at the same time.

Giving one antibiotic at a time would allow the bacteria enough time to tailor the correct mutations they needed to resist all antibiotics they might come in contact with in the future.

A bacterium would need to have a mutation caused by insertion or deletion of a sequence, which is much less likely to occur than a base pair substitution, in order to survive several antibiotics at a time.

Answer 1

the third statement is correct

Answer 2

Thanks

Answer 3

no problemo :)

Answer 4

the third statement is correct....if u are giving multiple antibiotics...the resistance to the drugs develop faster....antibiotics have different modes of action on bacteria...one cleaves peptidoglycan layer...one inhibits translation....so it defenitely takes longer time for the bacteria to show resistance.....take the example of antibiotics for tuberculosis....we have been using lotz of antibiotics for longer time....now mycobacterium has developed multiple drug resistance...but in case of virus antigenic shift occurs...so it is difficult to administer antibiotics to viral infections.....