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Regina Barber (0:22)
In 1928, the Scottish physician Alexander Fleming made a discovery that would change the field of medicine forever. He was studying bacteria on agar plates in the lab when he noticed something odd. There weren't any bacteria growing around a spot of mold that had contaminated a part of the plate. It turns out he discovered a medical super compound, penicillin. Since then, penicillin and other antibiotics have saved millions of lives with one problem, the growing threat of antibiotic resistance.
Natalie Balaban (0:56)
Antibiotic resistance means that somehow the bacterium usually acquired a mutation. For example, the penicillin is there, but it doesn't do its job and therefore the bacterium grows happily and it's resistant to penicillin.
Regina Barber (1:11)
This is Natalie Balaban, a biophysicist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. And she says more and more bacteria are becoming resistant to all of our antibiotics, which could spell a major problem. One day, all of our antibiotics could stop working unless scientists can find a major weakness in bacteria. Recently, Natalie's lab may have done just that, by hacking dormant bacteria, because antibiotics, they work by killing off growing bacteria, but sometimes bacteria don't grow, they shut down. And in that case, antibiotics, like our guy, penicillin, are rendered useless.
Natalie Balaban (1:54)
The penicillin will kill all the growing ones, but the ones that are not growing are going to persist. And this is what it's called, persistence.
Regina Barber (2:03)
Today on the show, antibiotic Persistence. What it is and how it can help scientists discover new ways to combat a growing bacterial threat. I'm Regina Barber. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
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