Just recently, I was reading an article that described the tremendous success of a particular treatment in combating the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) superbug. If you haven't heard of MRSA directly, it is likely you've heard something about current concerns that we are headed toward a time when our antibiotics will no longer be effective. This is largely an inevitable phenomenon that occurs because some bugs in the population are genetically more resistant to the relevant drug. When bugs that are susceptible to the drug are wiped out during treatment, the remaining drug-resistant bugs then reproduce and become the dominant variant in the population. To combat this, scientists are constantly pushing the boundaries of science to find new ways to combat these bugs.
In biology, this situation is called...