Not one of the ways that bacteria have adapted to become resistant to antimicrobial agents.

Explanation:

An antimicrobial agent is a natural or synthetic chemical that kills or inhibits the growth of microorganisms. Bacteria have a mechanism of transferring genomic material called horizontal gene transfer, the movement of genes between cells that are not direct descendants of one another. Horizontal gene transfer allows cells to quickly acquire new characteristics and drives metabolic diversity. One of the characteristics usually acquired is the resistance to antibiotics.

Three mechanisms of genetic exchange are known in prokaryotes:

(1) transformation, in which free DNA released from one cell is taken up by another; (2) transduction, in which DNA transfer is mediated by a virus; and (3) conjugation, in which DNA transfer requires cell-to-cell contact and a conjugative plasmid in the donor cell.

Examples of genes transferred by transducing bacteriophages include multiple antibiotic resistance genes among strains of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, Shiga-like toxin genes in Escherichia coli, virulence factors in Vibrio cholerae, and genes encoding photosynthetic proteins in cyanobacteria.

Conjugative plasmids use a mechanism to transfer copies of themselves and the genes they encode, such as those for antibiotic resistance, to new host cells.