Drug-Resistant Bacteria Evolved on Hedgehogs Long before the Use of Antibiotics

 

Tomas Mercado

Mr. Ippolito

Current Event 9

1/11/2022

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/drug-resistant-bacteria-hedgehog-mrsa

Wilke, Carolyn. “Drug-Resistant Bacteria Evolved on Hedgehogs Long before the Use of Antibiotics.” Science News, 7 Jan. 2022, www.sciencenews.org/article/drug-resistant-bacteria-hedgehog-mrsa.

Regarding the article, Drug-Resistant Bacteria Evolved on Hedgehogs Long before the Use of Antibiotics, natural antibiotics are produced by fungi on the animals, which may have aided in the developing resistance. A microbial standoff under the spiky spines of European hedgehogs may have generated a hazardous drug-resistant bacterium long before the period of antibiotic usage in humans. According to Jesper Larsen, a veterinarian at Copenhagen's Statens Serum Institut, these microorganisms had to receive the genes that gave them resistance from someplace, and science can't explain where these genes came from. One type of methicillin-resistant, Staphylococcus aureus, has been tracked down to hedgehogs from hundreds of years ago. Developed on the skin of the hedgehogs, a fungus that is creating natural antibiotics could be the reason for drug-resisitance to evolve in the bacteria. 

Years previously, scientist Sophie Rasmussen, who'd been part of the current project and is now at the University of Oxford, approached Larsen's team about examining a freezer full of dead hedgehogs. MRSA was found in 61 percent of the animals collected in Denmark which is an absurdly high percentage. Several findings prove that hedgehogs are a MRSA resovoir. For example in the article it says,” The team got a clue from a 1960s research study about Trichophyton erinacei, a fungus that causes ‘hedgehog ringworm’ in humans. That study reported that T. erinacei on hedgehog skin killed some S. aureus but not others that were resistant to penicillin. Growing T. erinacei in the lab, the researchers identified two penicillin-like antibiotics pumped out by the fungi.” Overall, the anitbiotic resistance was due to an envormnetal factor and the process of evolution. 

Overall, this article was a huge success in terms of conveying the information to the reader and drawing conclusions to aid comprehension of the aim. Despite the fact that there were numerous achievements throughout the article, I wish the author had given more direct quotes to assist support this conclusion. I also believed it lacked background material that may have helped the reader better comprehend the purpose behind this research.