This will come as no surprise to those who work (or worked) in healthcare but it is sobering, even a bit scary, to see it in action. Most of you already know about evolving bacterial resistance to antibiotics, but it seems a bit "far off" and abstract. It is not.
Stunning Videos of Evolution in Action - The AtlanticYou’ve undoubtedly seen this plot before: a cast of characters gets slowly whittled down over the course of a quest, in which increasingly difficult challenges compels the protagonists to acquire new skills. A familiar story, but you’ve never seen it play out in a movie quite like this.
The cast members are bacteria. Their set is a large acrylic dish, four feet wide and two across. It is filled with a nutritious agar jelly that contains varying amounts of an antibiotic. The outermost sections are free of the drug—a safe zone in which microbes can easily grow. But as they move towards the dish’s centre, the concentration of antibiotic goes up in 10-fold increments, and conditions become increasingly deadly. To survive in these toxic zones, they need to evolve resistance.