The ‘Eat me cake’ theory, or genetic cannibalism of the enemy: A cause of vanishing antimicrobial resistance

L évi-Strauss, quoted by M. Foucault [1], explained that in primitive civilisations, the way to fight against enemies was either to eat their strength by cannibalism or to exile them by ostracism. This analogy is also applicable to the immune defences of individuals and populations, complementing our analogy with another new punishment against enemies in humans which is jail, created to keep enemies in a situation in which they cannot act/interact or multiply (dormant virus or bacteria). The first, and probably the oldest, defence of microbial populations against competing populations (enemies) was genetic cannibalism, with the consumption of their genetic material, which I want to report here as a new theory named ‘Eat me cake’, inspired, as many other evolutionary theories, by Alice in Wonderland where consumption of a cake allows growing at will [2,3].
Source: International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents - Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Authors: Tags: Hot Topic Source Type: research