A patient comes to see you complaining of a spider bite. He shows you a sore on his wrist—the area around it is red and swollen, and the lesion is leaking pus. The patient tells you he found a spider in his car, which is why he thinks this is a bite. He also tells you that he has been taking penicillin tablets that his wife had left over after being prescribed the drug a few months previously for pneumonia. Even though he has taken the tablets for four days, the lesion is not healing and that he is really feeling terrible, with pain, fever, and chills. You suspect that your patient has a wound infection, so you sample the pus and send it to the lab for analysis.
-You explain to your patient that there has been an increase in the number of strains of S. aureus that are now resistant to methicillin. The gene conferring resistance has moved from one strain to another via mobile gene elements, an example of which is a(n) ________.
A) bacteriovirus
B) insertional divider
C) histone
D) transposon
E) chromosome

Question

A patient comes to see you complaining of a spider bite. He shows you a sore on his wrist—the area around it is red and swollen, and the lesion is leaking pus. The patient tells you he found a spider in his car, which is why he thinks this is a bite. He also tells you that he has been taking penicillin tablets that his wife had left over after being prescribed the drug a few months previously for pneumonia. Even though he has taken the tablets for four days, the lesion is not healing and that he is really feeling terrible, with pain, fever, and chills. You suspect that your patient has a wound infection, so you sample the pus and send it to the lab for analysis.
-You explain to your patient that there has been an increase in the number of strains of S. aureus that are now resistant to methicillin. The gene conferring resistance has moved from one strain to another via mobile gene elements, an example of which is a(n) ________.
A) bacteriovirus
B) insertional divider
C) histone
D) transposon
E) chromosome

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The mobile gene elements that transfer antibiotic resistance genes from one bacterial strain to another are called transposons. Bacteriophages (not bacterioviruses) can also transfer genes between bacteria, but they are not usually associated with antibiotic resistance. Insertional dividers and histones are not relevant to this situation. While antibiotic resistance genes can be found on the bacterial chromosome, the context in which they are typically transferred involves mobile genetic elements like transposons.

A Patient Comes to See You Complaining of a Spider