While we are never quick to recommend antibiotics at Gutbliss, they can definitely be life saving in certain situations – and when deadly bacteria don’t respond to antibiotics, there can be grave consequences. Antibiotic resistance is a growing issue in the medical field; research that sheds light on how some bacteria evade antibiotics can’t come quickly enough. Luckily, scientists at the University of California San Diego conducted a study that helps us answer the question of how some bacteria survive antibiotic treatment. 

UCSD researchers found that bacteria can regulate the uptake of alkaline metal (magnesium specifically) ions to stabalize their ribosomes – the very foundations of survival on a cellular level, which transform genes into proteins – to survive antibiotic attacks. With this new and surprising finding, scientists hope to alter current antibiotic drugs and increase their potency by controlling how bacteria take up magnesium, to fight against this unique bacterial defense mechanism. Cell