Antibiotic resistant bacteria through evolution
The world today has a lot of diseases that affect humans, whether this is directly (human diseases) or indirectly (agricultural diseases for example). Currently our main treatment for these is antibiotics. However, many bacteria have evolved resistance to the antibiotics. This makes the antibiotics less effective and means that treatments that have worked in the past now cannot help tackle the disease. Evolutionary-microbiologists are researching new ways to combat these diseases to overcome the problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
This topic is strongly related to the National Curriculum and is a contemporary issue to our every day lives.
The National Curriculum states that students should be taught to:
- recognise that living things produce offspring of the same kind, but normally offspring vary and are not identical to their parents
- identify how animals and plants are adapted to suit their environment in different ways and that adaptation may lead to evolution
Activity!
Take a look at our activity to help teach your class all about antibiotic resistance.
| Hands on activity teaching all about how antibiotic resistant bacteria occurs through evolution | Antibiotic resistant bacteria |