Via (Quartz) In November of 2015, scientists in southeastern China were combing through bacterial samples collected from hospitals in the Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces when they discovered something that would immediately grab the attention of the entire medical community. Many of the bacteria collected were carrying a new gene called MCR-1. It's an innocuous-sounding name for a sequence of DNA code, but it poses a potentially deadly threat to millions around the world. MCR-1 produces an enzyme that makes bacteria invincible to one of the world's most powerful antibiotics, a drug called colistin, which is only used as a last resort when all other antibiotics have failed. This rogue gene is making hordes of bacteria immune to colistin–and it is spreading rapidly across the globe. So far, MCR-1 has been detected in at least ten countries, including Canada, China, and the UK. According to research published in The Lancet, the gene's emergence appears to be at least partially linked to