Adapting to climate change

The drug industry is under pressure from regulators, payers and shareholders to survive in a changing business environment. The microbial world offers a few lessons in adaptation to environmental change.

The term adaptation conjures grim visions of natural selection and Darwinian struggle. The net result of natural selection is genetic adaptation, the gradual change in the genome of a species over multiple generations thanks to sex, mutation and culling of the weak...