SILVER SPRING, Md. — It was a Friday in mid-May,
and Erik Snesrud was checking out the first batch of samples under a
new directive.
The order had just come in to look for a new
gene called mcr-1 that had already achieved global notoriety among
microbiologists. It gives germs the ability to withstand the effects of
colistin, a last-resort antibiotic used to save the lives of people
infected with serious superbugs.
The sample was loaded into one of the super-fast gene sequencers at the
lab inside the bowels of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. The
small team at the Multidrug Resistant Organism Repository and
Surveillance Network (MRSN) lab specializes in testing germs for
antibiotic resistance, which has become the scourge of hospitals all
over the world.
The results were back in minutes. One of the samples — some E. coli
bacteria taken from a woman with a urinary tract infection in
Pennsylvania — carried the gene.
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Source: NBC News
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