Question

Claim/Evidence/Reasoning: We discovered that under certain environmental conditions, bacteria with one kind of variation tended to become more common in the population over time. Which kind(s) of bacteria was this, and if a patient was infected by a population made up of 40 of this kind of bacteria, would they be as easy, as hard, or harder to eliminate with antibiotics as a population of the 40 bacteria?

a) Bacteria with the identified variation would be easier to eliminate.
b) Bacteria with the identified variation would be harder to eliminate.
c) Bacteria with the identified variation would have the same elimination difficulty as the population of 40 bacteria.

Answer 1

Bacteria with antibiotic resistance would be harder to eliminate, as they have adapted to the presence of antibiotics and survive treatments that kill non-resistant bacteria.

Step-by-step explanation:

The process you're asking about is an example of evolution through natural selection, which can cause populations of bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance. The bacteria with the variation that provides resistance to antibiotics would be harder to eliminate because they have adapted to the presence of antibiotics. They survive the treatment that kills non-resistant bacteria, and over time, these resistant bacteria become more common in the population. Therefore, if a patient were infected with 40 bacteria all containing the resistance variation, these bacteria would be more difficult to eliminate compared to an infection with 40 non-resistant bacteria.