Antibiotic Resistance Flashcards
What are antibiotics?
Drugs that kill bacteria cells but not human cells
Three famous antibiotics?
Penicillin, amoxycillin, methicillin, streptomycin, vancomycin.
Where do antibiotics come from?
Naturally made by fungi and bacteria.
How do doctors test for the beta antibiotics to treat a bacterial disease?
By antibiotic assay
What is antibiotic resistance caused by?
Random mutation in bacteria cell, forming a resistance gene.
How is the resistance gene spread?
By natural selection.
What are the four steps of natural selection explaining how resistance spreads?
- One bacterial cell randomly mutates and becomes resistant.
- All normal bacteria are killed by antibiotics.
- The resistant cell survives and reproduces quickly, passing on its resistance gene.
- all the bacteria in this population are resistant. The resistant bacteria can spread to other people.
What is staphylococcus aureus?
Bacterium that can cause diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, toxic shock syndrome.
How does infection spread quickly in hospitals?
By close contact and unclean hospitals.
What is selection pressure?
Helps bacteria to become resistant, shares genetic material by being close, exchanges parts of DNA such as resistance genes.
What are alternatives to antibiotics
Vaccines, improving infection control.
What will happen with the use of less antibiotics
Less antibiotics means less selection pressure which means slower resistance.
