MCR-1

MCR-1 is a genetic mechanism by which the mcr-1 gene confers the first known plasmid-mediated resistance to colistin, a polymixin and one of a number of last-resort antibiotics. The mechanism, first discovered in E. coli (strain SHP45) from a pig in China in November 2015, was later found by independent researchers in samples from the Netherlands, Malaysia, Portugal, Denmark, and England. MCR-1 is the first known polymixin resistance mechanism capable of horizontal gene transfer.

This is being called the latest example of a Tragedy of the Commons, an attack onto the world's Antibiotic Commons.

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