5 Summary
This week introduced the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance. You should now be able to explain how antibiotic resistance protects bacteria from both natural and synthetic antibiotics and give examples of the main mechanisms of antibiotic resistance.
You should now be able to:
- state what is meant by the term ‘antibiotic resistance’
- recognise that antibiotic resistance evolved to protect bacteria
- describe the three main mechanisms of resistance that bacteria have developed to counteract the action of antibiotics
- give examples of these resistance mechanisms
- distinguish between intrinsic and acquired antibiotic resistance.
Having seen how antibiotic resistance can be either intrinsic or acquired, next week you will look in more detail at the processes of mutation and gene transfer that lead to acquired resistance.
You can now go to Week 4.
OpenLearn - Understanding antibiotic resistance
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