Team:Peking R/HumanPractice/Review

                   humanpractice review

reference:

[1]

Once found, antibiotics were considered as the solution to most infectious diseases and saved billions of people’s lives.  Unfortunately, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, combined with the widely use of antibiotic resistance genes as markers, lead to a worldwide public health problem——Antibiotic resistance. It is easier than ever before to find antibiotic resistance bacteria around us. We continue to read news stories about superbugs, bacteria that are increasingly resistant to common antibiotics currently. They not only cause crossbred bacteria pollution, but also lead to infectious diseases outbreak, like what happened in Europe some months before this year. Every year, E. U. reports 25,000 deaths due to bacterial infection that are outsmarting even the newly invented antibiotics [1]. Many people believe that the abuse of antibiotic causes the spread of antibiotic resistance bacterium; however, some researchers believe that the lab work also takes an important role in this process. Our human practice focuses on the treatment of useless or excrescent antibiotic resistance bacterium and possible solution of the spread of antibiotic resistance bacterium.

Using antibiotics in inappropriate ways and abusing them is a majored and old cause of antibiotic resistance. Most people used to rely on antibiotics every time they have an infection, though sometimes they get viral infections or they can recover soon without antibiotics. What’s worse, in many countries, it is easily to get antibiotics without a prescription. There are always people who don’t follow the dose and schedule instructions exactly. Using antibiotics when you don’t need them or using them in a wrong way is a significant contributor to antibiotic resistance.

Antibiotic are not only used to treat infection of bacterium, but also used in agriculture, and the agricultural use also poses a significant problem. Both domestic and farm animals are treated with antibiotics, not only to cure infections, but also to promote faster growth and prevent disease in healthy ones. In fact, though there is little information and statistics on the quantity and range of antibiotics used in agricultural, people believe that the majority of antibiotics produced are used in this industry. As agriculture is relatively far from our lives, it is easy to ignore these widely available antibiotics and their side effects. Antibiotic resistance in and around factory farms is particularly rapid and vigorous, leading from the difficult to find the suitable doses of antibiotics for animals.

Antibiotic resistance gene, which resides on plasmids to facilitate the selection of copies carry along this plasmid, is the most common marker used in synthesis biology and other genetic engineering. Most, if not all, plasmids, including iGEM parts, carry one or more antibiotic resistance genes. Though these genes can be transferred between bacteria in a horizontal fashion and should be treated carefully, the widely using of them low researchers attention on them.

Beside this, one of the goals of synthesis biology is to make design of biological system easy enough so that people without a traditional education in biology be able to take part in this design. Many efforts have been made to develop a toolbox which is easy to use for people without professional background. On the one hand, the extensive use of such toolbox attracts researchers from non-biological disciplines such as engineering or computer scientists and makes this field more interesting; on the other hand, the participation of people lack formal biosafety training will automatically raise the risk of biosecuriety. This risk includes many aspects:

1, there is a good chance that one day ordinary people would have the ability to create novel organisms which may be harmful to the environment or people;

2, people without appropriate training may treat the synthesis biological parts in a wrong way.

In fact, even professional biological researchers are likely to ignore safety principles (details in 3.2). As more and more parts have been created and used, researchers are too familiar with antibiotic resistance bacterium to treat them serious. The common treatments like pouring into sewer or throwing into the garbage can, with or without medium, cannot prevent these antibiotic resistance genes or these bactium from affecting the environment.