"
Team:Elan Vital South Korea/p background
From 2014hs.igem.org
Project Background
MRSA is a strain of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, and is very dangerous, shows resistance to drugs, and can even cause serious, life-threatening problems. MRSA stands for Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. We differentiate between MRSA and non-MRSA S. aureus (or MSSA: Methicillin sensitive S. aureus) by the resistance to methicillin, but methicillin resistance is not the most important thing about MRSA. What really makes MRSA stand out from other S. aureus is that they exhibit resistance to β-lactam antibiotics. MRSA is called ‘methicillin resistant’ because methicillin is a β-lactam antibiotic, and is used commonly for finding MRSA. Because of its multidrug resistance due to evolution, MRSA is a serious problem in the medical community. MSSA, the strain of staphylococcus that is sensitive to β-lactam antibiotics, was not considered a serious threat, but in the last 50 years, mutations led to MRSA, which was much more dangerous than the original staphylococcus aureus. Originally, staphylococcus aureus was not contagious, but MRSA is very contagious with high frequencies of nosocomial infections.
Photo of MRSA taken using Scanning Electron Micrograph 10,000x magnification
