The potential for antibiotic resistance was recognized in the early 1940s, almost immediately after the first large-scale clinical use of penicillin, the first antibiotic. Mass production of penicillin was part of the war effort of World War II, when the drug was used widely by military populations to treat the wounded. However, even before the war had ended, resistance to penicillin was already being reported. In 1940, British biochemists Sir Ernst Boris Chain and Sir Edward Penley Abraham published a report about a bacterial enzyme capable of destroying penicillin. In the following decades, overuse and repeated exposure to antibiotic agents favored the selection and replication of numerous strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Select ALL of the statements that accurately portray the role of natural selection in antibiotic resistance.
A) When bacteria are repeatedly exposed to antibiotics, they learn how to avoid the antibiotic and survive to reproduce.
B) When people overuse antibiotics, the bacteria get resistant to the antibiotic and it is no longer an effective treatment.
C) Some bacteria possess a gene for bacterial resistance. These bacteria are likely to survive a course or antibiotics and reproduce.
D) Bacteria containing the gene for antibiotic resistance can share a plasmid of the gene with other bacteria, allowing the population of bacteria with antibiotic resistance to survive and reproduce.
E) When someone quits taking an antibiotic when they are feeling better, they likely kill only the weaker bacteria. The bacteria with a gene for antibiotic resistance survive, giving them the opportunity to reproduce.