Antibiotic resistance is a major and growing problem worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic resistance is rising to dangerously high levels in all parts of the world, and new resistance mechanisms are emerging and spreading globally, threatening our ability to treat common infectious diseases. But how these bacterial resistance mechanisms occur, and whether we can predict their evolution, is far from understood.
Researchers have previously shown that one way bacteria can survive antibiotics is to evolve a "timer" that keeps them dormant for the duration of antibiotic treatment. But the antibiotic kills them when they wake up, so the easy solution is to continue the antibiotic treatment for a longer duration.
