Antibiotics: our greatest ally or our worst enemy?

It is no secret that antibiotics are a life saving medical discovery.

Since their discovery in 1941 they have changed the field of medicine and what started with just penicillin has grown into more than 100 different types that are commonly used. They took bacterial infections and changed them from a life-threatening diagnosis to a very treatable condition. They couldn't have been invented at a better time. They were used in WWII to treat combat infections which saved many many lives.

A WWII Poster Advertising the Benefits of Penicillin

However, they are a double-edged sword. They are only effective when they are prescribed with responsibility. This is because antibiotics put a tremendous amount of selective pressure on bacteria. That selective pressure combined with the rate of mutation of bacteria makes it easy for populations of bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics. When that happens they go back to being dangerous as we no longer have medicine to defend against them.https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/Book%3A_Introductory_Biology_(CK-12)/07%3A_Prokaryotes_and_Viruses/7.06%3A_Prokaryote_Reproduction

Bacteria are a very unique type of organism because they transfer genetic material between each other and have mutations all the time. This is because the integrity of their genetic material is far less important than that of humans or even mammals. To use humans as an example when our DNA is being copied there are many steps our body takes to ensure that the DNA is copied correctly as any mutations could result in significant problems that can often lead to death. In bacteria, a mutation is far less of a big deal and the process of copying the genetic material is far less accurate than humans. There are many experiments that show that the introduction of additional genetic material to bacteria allows them to survive in environments with antibiotics. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7908/#:~:text=Genetic%20exchanges%20among%20bacteria%20occur,to%20the%20recipient%20by%20mating.

E.Coli  Bacteria mixed with a pGLO Plasmid that gives it antibiotic resistance and makes it glow under black light

Bacteria also reproduce at a much faster rate than most organisms. Some are even able to reproduce every 20 minutes which allows them to evolve in days instead of the centuries that it would take most organisms to evolve. An experiment conducted by Harvard Medical School shows just how efficiently bacteria can reproduce and evolve to meet the needs of their environment. In this experiment in only took 11 days for bacteria to able to mutate and for the population to evolve to survive in 1000 times the levels of antibiotics that the wild type can survive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8

A Havard Medical School Experiment that tested the ability of bacteria to survive different levels of antibiotics

Antibiotics have been instrumental in increasing the safety of the medical industry and increasing the number of things we can fight off. It is important that doctors stay vigilant with their prescription of them in order to preserve their effectiveness.

Bacteria is not all bad. It serves a very important role in any ecosystem or food chain it is in. They are decomposers that deal with dead organisms and help create fertile soil. When an animal dies it doesn't just disappear for no reason it bacteria decompose it and puts it back into the soil. They are basically the cleaning crew of ecosystems except they also make soil that is great for plants to grow in. While they are not keystone species without them any ecosystem would become overrun with dead organisms and the ecosystem would fall apart. 

It's pretty incredible how one type of organism can be so dangerous and so hostile and yet is incredibly essential everywhere. Even inside of us there are bacteria that serve a very important role. It just goes to show that nature is really just one big balancing act with all organisms playing positive and negative roles in their ecosystem (except jellyfish they are lame)