The Best of Australian Science: March 2013

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Another month behind us with plenty of interesting and intriguing articles written by Australian Science authors, bloggers, and researchers, and it is time to recapitulate the most read stories and share them with you. I hope you’ll enjoy these articles.

Note: If you are interested in science blogging and contributing to Australian Science – contact us and check out the Editor’s note.

Combating the rise of the superbugs: The health and scientific challenges of antibiotic resistance by David Borradale

It’s hard to imagine the world prior to antibiotics, a world where even a deep laceration could frequently spell significant illness or even death due to infection. Thankfully, since the discovery of penicillin in 1929 by Alexander Fleming, we now have a range of potent antibiotics to treat many of the various types of bacterial infection.

There is a problem though, bacteria are great survivors and have been competing against other bacteria and microorganisms for billions of years. As  Professor Matt Cooper from the University of Queensland  puts it “Billions of years ago, bacterial species were engaged in an arms race against each other and the chemicals they developed to kill one another have been modified into today’s antibiotics