The World Health Organization has identified resistance to antibiotics as one of the greatest global threats to health, causing approximately five million deaths each year.
Dr Hobbs, a molecular microbiologist, said: „Antibiotic resistance is getting a lot of attention, but resistance is an underestimated problem that needs to be tackled.
„Over the past 10 years, it has become clear that bacteria first become tolerant to the presence of antibiotics.
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„This can lead to repeated infections and the bacteria can then become resistant to treatment.
„Tolerance is already a widespread phenomenon: it has been detected in more than 20 bacterial species, including streptococci, pneumonia and strep throat, and Staphylococcus aureus, which is part of the SA of MRSA.”
Dr. Hobbs and his team want to understand how tolerance develops at the molecular level.
They are investigating a bacterial enzyme called Prs that changes over time to confer tolerance.
They discovered the mutated enzyme by examining one of the first samples of MRSA taken in the 1950s.
Dr Hobbs said: „There are many different strains of MRSA, but we have been investigating this since the 1950s because it grows very slowly in the laboratory compared to other strains.
„This is a good clue because bacteria that exhibit antibiotic resistance are often quite slow. Growing slowly is a way for them to get around antibiotics.
„We isolated a special version of Prs from this ancient MRSA, and over the next two years, we will study how its molecular structure has changed and how this affects the bacteria’s response to antibiotics.
„We will also explore the impact of Prs on tolerance to different antibiotic treatments.”
He added: „We need antibiotics to be effective, or we’ll go back to a time when simple, common infections were fatal.
„Antibiotic tolerance leads to persistent serious infections – and it is imperative that we understand and tackle its underlying mechanisms.”