Over the past decade, drug-resistant (抗药性) diseases have appeared as a major health threat. But where do they develop the drug resistance? One surprising theory: they may have developed the resistance on farms, and not in hospitals.
The crop protection products farmers use to control many plant diseases are almost the same as the drugs doctors use to treat infections, including fungi (真菌). Fungi are continually mutating (变异), and with a life cycle measured in days or weeks, they mutate quickly. When a mutation produces resistance to a chemical–killing fungi, fungi will jump to any host that provides a welcoming environment, such as a human body. And if the treatment for the fungal infection involves a drug similar to the fungicide (杀菌剂) met on the farm, fungi may develop quickly in the human body—just as they did in the field.
An obvious solution is to use less fungicide in the field. Reducing fungicide use would not only slow the development of the drug resistance, but it would also help restore diversity to the fungal world. Fungicides are a must in the farming community. Plant diseases cause a major problem for farmers globally—in some crops, disease can reduce harvests by more than 70 percent—and failure to deal with the problem can mean financial ruin.
Just like fungi—or, indeed, any living thing—plants continually evolve(进化). This is how natural gene editing (基因编辑) works, and without it, we'd all still be single cells in a salty soup. Through natural selection, almost any plant will eventually produce resistance to fungi. But this can take centuries, so we don't have the time to wait.
On the other hand, advances in genetics have given us an understanding of nature's gene editing process in plants, helping us develop resistance to a disease. Gene editing techniques can then enable us to produce disease resistance－just as nature would do, if given enough time.
