Okay. So bacteria actually contain other plasmids in addition to the F factor. So, like I said before, there are, you know, 270 different types of plasmids, and the main one that we talked about is the F factor, obviously, because of its importance in conjugation. But another really important one I talk about is the R plasmid, and this is the plasmid that allows bacteria to confer antibiotic resistance. So we hear about these superbugs and like, you know, take all of your antibiotics because you don't want superbugs, and, they're killing people all over the place, and, being a little dramatic here, but you hear about them in the news and that's how they present it. And so the R plasmid is what allows bacteria to do this. So these plasmids, if one bacterium has an R plasmid that's resistant to penicillin and there are other bacteria around, it can actually be transferred between bacterial species. It doesn't have to be the same species. It can be any bacteria that's just sort of around it. And it can say, hey, I can grow without, you know, in the presence of penicillin, and all the bacteria are like, oh my goodness, give me that plasmid. And so they do, and so all these different bacterial species now become resistant to Penicillin, which is obviously a horrible thing.
Now the R plasmids, are really effective and they're different from the F factor because they contain an extra thing on it that's super important. These things are called transposons. Now you may have heard of transposons before. If you haven't, it's totally okay. We'll talk about them. But essentially, what a transposon is, in just brief form, is it's called a jumping gene. And this gene can, sort of, cut itself out of wherever it is and sort of jump to a different part of the organism, or in this case, for the R plasmid, actually different organisms completely. So the R plasmid contains a transposon, completely. So the R plasmid contains a transposon and that transposon will allow it to cut out of the bacteria it's in and transfer into other bacteria. And so it can assist in this DNA transfer, and it's part of the reason why it allows it to be able to jump between all of these bacterial species. So this is a really important plasmid. The R plasmid does antibiotic resistance. So, with that, let's unload it on.
