Watch Bacteria Become Resistant to Antibiotics in a Matter of Days: A Quick, Stop-Motion Film

The video above should ter­ri­fy you a lit­tle. Record­ed at Har­vard Med­ical School (HMS), the time-motion film lets you see “bac­te­ria [Escherichia coli] devel­op resis­tance to increas­ing­ly high­er dos­es of antibi­otics in a mat­ter of days.” And it amounts, says Har­vard, to “the first large-scale glimpse of the maneu­vers of bac­te­ria as they encounter increas­ing­ly high­er dos­es of antibi­otics and adapt to survive—and thrive—in them.” You can learn more about the exper­i­ment itself, and the video tech­niques used to make the stop motion, over at HMS. The exper­i­ment is also described in the Sep­tem­ber 9 issue of Sci­ence. 

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