Did you know that by 2050, drug resistant infections has the potential to surpass cancer as one of the leading causes of death. (“Global Call to Action to Address Antimicrobial Resistance,” n.d.) The widespread use of antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections the bacteria begin to develop drug-resistant pathogens. The environmental pressures created by antibiotics give bacteria with antimicrobial resistant genes a greater chance for survival . (Laxminarayan et al. 2013, 1) Horizontal gene transfer is used to rapidly transfer the resistant genes, which severely limits the effectiveness of antibiotics thus taking a significant toll on global infectious disease management.(Oh et al. 2026, 2; Pandey and Vavilala 2024, 1)
Antibiotic resistance often starts with quorum sensing signaling pathways. Bacteria self-produce autoinducers that function as signals to surrounding bacteria; Gram-negative bacteria communicate through N-acyl-homoserine lactones and gram-positive bacteria use oligopeptides. In the presence of antibiotics, the bacteria will send signals to one another to defend against the antibiotics, which ultimately signals the bacteria to form biofilms.(Das et al. 2026, 1)A biofilm is a dense complex of microbial communities that whose bacteria cells near the centre have inactive metabolic processes which makes them resistant to metabolic antibiotics. (Pandey and Vavilala 2024, 2)
The development of the CRISPR-Cas 9 is a tool that can precisely edit genes across various microorganisms and opens the idea of removing antimicrobial resistant genes as seen in Figure 1, with the hopes of allowing antibiotics to have the same or closer the same effectiveness as before antimicrobial resistance.
Two methods of CRISPR that have shown to be effective are the CRISPR Cas, the removal of gene that contributes to antibacterial resistance and CRISPRi, that suppresses the transcription of the quorum signaling gene without removing it from the plasmid.(Das et al. 2026, 16) These methods have shown to be effective on Staphylococcus aureus, E.coli, Enterococcus faecalis, Streptococcus mutans and Cedecea neteri.(Pandey and Vavilala 2024) However, CRISPR-Cas 9 comes with its own set of challenges; such as the delivery strategies for host specific bacteriophages into the target bacteria cell. Figure 2, shows strategies used in previous studies, including bacteriophages , conjugative plasmids and nanoparticle platforms. (Laxminarayan et al. 2013, 3)
To conclude, the CRISPR-Cas 9 method of removing antimicrobial resistant genes has shown to be effective across several gram positive and gram-negative bacteria in a lab setting. However, applying for the CRISPR Cas 9 comes with challenges when applied to real life scenarios, such as the transportation of a gene editing technology/delivery method to an intended area within an organism.
Resources:
Das, Aliviya, Rashmita Biswas, Rudy Najiar, Pravallika Thatharaju, Sagnik Biswas, and Utpal Mohan. 2026. “Quorum Sensing in Bacteria: Insights into Communication and Inhibition Strategies—a Review.” Archives of Microbiology 208 (4): 157. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-025-04610-x.
“Global Call to Action to Address Antimicrobial Resistance.” n.d. Accessed November 9, 2026. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/global-call-to-action-to-address-antimicrobial-resistance.
Laxminarayan, Ramanan, Adriano Duse, Chand Wattal, et al. 2013. “Antibiotic Resistance—the Need for Global Solutions.” The Lancet Infectious Diseases 13 (12): 1057–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(13)70318-9.
Oh, Yujeong, Hyunjin Lee, and Sungho Jang. 2026. “Emerging Synthetic Biology-Assisted Technologies for Overcoming Antibiotic Resistance: CRISPR-Cas, Bacteriophage, Microbiome, and Metabolic Engineering-Based Solutions.” Journal of Microbiology (Seoul, Korea) 64 (3): e2512002. https://doi.org/10.71150/jm.2512002.
Pandey, Pooja, and Sirisha L. Vavilala. 2024. “From Gene Editing to Biofilm Busting: CRISPR-CAS9 Against Antibiotic Resistance—A Review.” Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics 82 (2): 549–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12013-024-01276-y.
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