Question

You recently have been diagnosed with a UTI and you need to be prescribed antibiotics. The pathogen infecting you had previously gained the genes below from HGT:

• Gene for an alternate folic acid pathway
• Mutation to the 30S subunit gene
• Gene for penicillinase

Your doctor is deciding between prescribing you erythromycin or sulfonamide. If your doctor was able to have a report telling her the genes your pathogen has, which drug should she choose to prescribe you?

Answer 1

The choice of drug you're given is Erythromycin and sulfonamide.

Now the bacteria have resistance against Penicillin as it have penicillinase enzyme which can inactivate penicillin.

Mutation to the subunit 30 of ribosome means Streptomycin can not be used too as it probably have resistance against it.

It also have alternate folic acid pathway so we can not use Sulfonamide. Sulfonamide drugs inhibit Folic acid synthesis by inhibiting dihydropteroate synthase enzyme. But this will not work too as bacteria have alternative pathway for folic acid.

Erythromycin on the other hand target 50s subunit of ribosome and the bacteria doesn't have resistance to it.

So it will work and doctor should choose erythromycin for the treatment.