Stealthy “superbugs” that cause dangerous infections are one of the world’s biggest public health concerns. Yet these antibiotic-resistant microbes, which are spreading fast in hospitals, aren’t a new phenomenon.
Today’s “enterococci” superbugs likely arose from ancestors dating back 450 million years ago, according to a new study in the journal Cell. That’s around the time animals first emerged from the ocean and began crawling on land, and it’s well before the age of dinosaurs.
Scientists said that studying the evolutionary history of these virulent microbes could lead to better tools for fighting antibiotic resistance in the modern era. Read more…
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