SCIENCE in your LIFE
Antibiotics: The Perfect Accident
By K.N.
We’ve all had those days where we’ve felt terrible. Throwing up, coughing, sneezing, or a sore throat or fever, it’s not very fun. So, you go to the doctor’s office and they prescribe you some antibiotics. Antibiotics have been used all around the world, and have saved many lives, but how did they come to be and what do they actually do?
The first antibiotic discovered was penicillin by Alexander Fleming. In 1928, Fleming was working with the bacteria staphylococcus (which can give you food poisoning, pneumonia, or foot infections – wear your shower shoes!). He left some of the bacteria out next to an open window, and when he came back, it was contaminated with mold.
The mold, Penicillium notatum, had killed all of the bacteria that it touched. It secreted a ‘juice’ that was killing the bacteria. In the early 1940s, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain managed to purify the penicillin so it could be used to treat humans.
There are many different ways that antibiotics work, and one of the most important things to consider when making an antibiotic is that it doesn’t affect humans, just the bacteria. This means that scientists have to find something that is different between the bacteria and us.
For example, our cells don’t have cell walls but most bacterial cells do. This means that we can target the cell wall while it is forming, which kills the bacteria but doesn’t hurt us. This is how penicillin works.
Other types of antibiotics can target wide ranges or specific types of bacteria, can kill bacteria or prevent it from growing so our immune system take care of the rest.
It’s also important to take all the antibiotics that the doctor prescribes for you. Even if you feel better, you should still keep taking them. This helps make sure that all of the bacteria that are making you sick are killed and don’t make you sick again, and so they don’t become resistant to the antibiotic (this means that the antibiotic won’t work against the bacteria anymore).
Antibiotic resistance is one of the reasons why it is important that we keep discovering new antibiotics. Like penicillin, most antibiotics have been discovered in our environment and then modified for treatments. It’s amazing what we can find in the world around us.
Please send any questions or comments to Dr. Spitzer (spitzern@marshall.edu )
Note: Any opinions expressed in these articles are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent those of Dr. Spitzer, the Department of Biological Sciences, or Marshall University.