B14 Evolution And Genetics Flashcards
How to prevent resistant strains developing.
It is important not to overuse antibiotics. For this reason, doctors no longer use antibiotics to treat non-serious infections Because antibiotics don’t affect viruses, people should not request antibiotics to treat a virus.
It is also important that patients finish their course of medicine every time. This is to make sure that all bacteria are killed by the antibiotic, so none survive to mutate and form resistant strains.
It is important to restrict the agricultural use of antibiotics. This is to prevent the spread of antibiotic resistance from animal to human pathogens.
What is MRSA
Hospitals use a lot of antibiotics to treat infections. As a result of natural selection, some of the bacteria in hospitals are resistant to many antibiotics. As doctors and nurses move from patient to patient, these antibiotic resistant bacteria are spread easily. This is what has happened with MRSA. At its peak in the early 21st century, MRSA alone caused or contributed to over 1000 deaths every year in UK hospitals and care homes.
How to prevent MRSA
Doctors implemented these strategies to reduce the spread:
• Antibiotics should only be used when they are really needed.
• Specific bacteria should be treated with specific antibiotics.
• Medical staff should wash their hands with soap and water or use alcohol gel between patient visits and wear disposable clothing or clothing that is regularly sterilised.
• Hospitals should have high standards of hygiene so that they are really clean.
• Patients who become infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria should be looked after in isolation from other patients.
• Visitors to hospitals and care homes should wash their hands as they enter and leave.
What is classification
Classification is the organisation of living things into groups according to their similarities. Biologists classify organism into groups so it is easier to study them and help us make sense of the living world. Through the different groups we can see how we are related to each other or the biodiversity between organisms.
Kingdoms
When Linnaeus first devised his classification system,
Kingdoms contain lots of organisms with many differences but a few important similarities. For example, all animals move their whole bodies about during at least part of their life cycle, and their cells do not have cellulose cell walls. Developments in microscopes have enabled scientists to compare the internal structures of cells.
Species
The smallest group of clearly identified living organisms in Linnaeus’s classification system is a species. Members of the same species are very similar. A species is a group of organisms that can breed together and produce fertile offspring.
Naming living things
The problem is solved because every organism has a scientific name given using a binomial system. Binomial means two names. The two names of an organism are in Latin and they give the genus and the species of the organism.
