Don't starve your bacteria folks!

A paper published by Dr. Dao Nguyen at McGill University shows that many infections, even those caused by antibiotic-sensitive bacteria, resist treatment when the bacteria is being starved.
And hence makes some infections incurable.

The resistance is induced when the bacteria becomes starved from nutrients during an infection, or if they live clustered together in groups known as biofilms (Biofilms are clusters of bacteria encased in a slimy coating, they can be found in human tissue.)

                                Image: Biofilm bacteria. The bacteria on the oustside of the clusters have the
                                        first shot at the nutrients, this produces starvation of the bacteria inside the 
                                       clusters and severe resistance to killing.

The resistance was first thought to be caused because most antibiotics target cellular functions needed for growth, which were blocked during starvation.

However this theory was quickly dissmissed when they noticed that the bacteria, during starvation, gave off an alarm that tells it's metabolism to prepare for starvation.

The theory was now that the alarm also could turn on functions that produce antibiotic resistance.
To test this theory, the team engineered a bacteria in which the alarm was inactivated and measured antibiotic resistance during starved conditions. Despite being gravely starved the bacteria did not inhibit any antibiotic resistant features, even though the starvation had caused the growth to stop.


This proved that the bacteria unaware of their starvation were not protected, even though they ran out of nutrients and stopped growth, proving once and for all that "what you don't know can hurt you."