To be fair... the mechanism of penicillin when described for the lay person is remarkably similar to the description that IBM provides.
"the polymer attaches to the bacteria's membrane and then facilitates destabilization of the membrane" vs "act by inhibiting the synthesis of the peptidoglycan layer of bacterial cell walls".
And the resistance isn't to getting your head blown off. That's thinking too much in the box. It's more like being resistant to having a bullet shot at your head, either by somehow becoming invisible to your assailant's vision, wearing a sufficiently good helmet, or having your vital organs located somewhere else.
While I agree that it seems much harder for bacteria to overcome this new approach, it really isn't safe to say that it's not possible. We have no idea about the microbial world. We barely know a fraction of the microbes that swarm around us, we have no idea what defenses, mechanisms and quirks they have that might provide a method of resistace.
And since this is a passive process (just some polymer floating around) that somehow does not damage human cells, you can bet that there's someway to spoof that.
To be clear (from an undergraduate microbiologist), my thought process behind the claim that IBM's polymer is less likely to promote resistance:
Faster-acting agents that cause immediate destruction are much harder to develop resistance to because normal minor variation from mutations is much less likely to produce anything that will save a cell from death.
So even if a cell produces a minor variation in its membrane protein it will likely still be killed and the "resistance" gets no chance to develop.
For something like penicillin, the bacteria gets quite some time to die (it inhibits synthesis!) and there are many different places in the peptidoglycan synthesis pathway for the cell to develop a resistance.
"the polymer attaches to the bacteria's membrane and then facilitates destabilization of the membrane" vs "act by inhibiting the synthesis of the peptidoglycan layer of bacterial cell walls".
And the resistance isn't to getting your head blown off. That's thinking too much in the box. It's more like being resistant to having a bullet shot at your head, either by somehow becoming invisible to your assailant's vision, wearing a sufficiently good helmet, or having your vital organs located somewhere else.
While I agree that it seems much harder for bacteria to overcome this new approach, it really isn't safe to say that it's not possible. We have no idea about the microbial world. We barely know a fraction of the microbes that swarm around us, we have no idea what defenses, mechanisms and quirks they have that might provide a method of resistace.
And since this is a passive process (just some polymer floating around) that somehow does not damage human cells, you can bet that there's someway to spoof that.