Antibiotics and How They Work

Antibiotics are type of medicine used to fight bacterial infections. Antibiotics are strong tools used in medicine today, but how do they really work? Well let’s take a look at how it works.

Antibiotics are like selective poison. It is made to kill the bad bacteria in your body, but not your body’s cells. The antibiotic stops one of the vital functions of a bacteria cell. If the bacteria cell can't function properly, so it dies. Antibiotics take advantage of the fact that bacteria and human cells are very different. Each contain different enzymes, or the proteins in its DNA that tell the cell what, where, and how to do things. An antibiotic disables an important enzyme in the bacteria, but does not disable the very defend enzyme in the cells in your body. This causes the bacteria cells to die but not your cells. Penicillin was one of the first antibiotics. These antibiotics disabled the enzyme that allowed a bacteria cell to build a cell wall. If it can't build a cell wall it can not reproduce and the bacteria cell dies. Part of developing an antibiotic is looking for these differences in enzymes and then developing a medicine to exploit the bacteria’s weakness. 

One of the main problems with antibiotics is that it can't stop bacteria that have mutated. Because the bacteria can reproduce so fast the chance of a mutation is high. The mutation can be through sexual reproduction or a defect in asexual reproduction, but any mutation can alter antibiotics useless. Even if there is only one cell that has mutated, the one cell can survive and reproduce very quickly, making it as if the antibiotic was never even used. Many bacterial diseases today have mutated so they are immune or almost immune to antibiotics. These kind of infections are very dangerous and can require months of hospitalization and treatment. Even so, there are many antibiotics that have been developed and that are used today. 

Antibiotics sadly don't work on viruses. Viruses are not living things; they are only filled with DNA or RNA and contain no other living parts. It uses other cells living parts to reproduce. It doesn't have the functions of a living thing, and those functions are what antibiotics stop. If there is nothing to stop, then there is nothing antibiotics can do. Below is a news report about a antibacterial resistant infection. Ever increasing use of antibiotics have caused more and more simple illnesses to become seriuos and hard to treat infection.

Famous Biologists. Part II

1. The field of biology has seen many important discoveries throughout the centuries. From vaccines to theories of the beginning and progression of life on Earth. Here are some of the famous biologists that have made significant contributions to various areas of life.

2. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), nationality: German. Known for: Plant hybridizations and genetics. When he wrote “Experiments on Plant Hybridization”, he paved the way (прокложил дорогу) for biology students to study genetic traits in peas. During his experiments, Gregor found that a specific trait would be dominant over other traits in the same species. This became to be recognized as the Mendelian inheritance (наследственность).

3. Joseph Lister (1827-1912), nationality: British. Known for: Using antiseptics for cleaning and sterilizing wounds. Joseph Lister was born in 1827 in the city of Upton, Essex, England where he attended the University of London, and later in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh and University of Glasgow. He became a surgeon (хирург) and pioneered the work of antiseptic or sterile surgery. He used carbolic acid to cleanse wounds and to sterilize instruments used for surgery.

4. Some of their discoveries have helped cure diseases, perform medical procedures, and classify animals. Others have formed the basis of the medical profession as we know it today. The many discoveries have improved not only our understanding of history but also our quality of living.

Life and its characteristics

1. Biology is the primary science concerned with the study of life. It arises such questions as: How do we know if something is living? Is a virus alive or dead? What are the characteristics of life? These are all very important questions with equally important answers.

2. Living things include both the visible world of animals and plants as well as the invisible world of bacteria and viruses. On a basic level, we can say that life is ordered. Organisms have an enormously complex organization. We're all familiar with the intricate (сложный) systems of the basic unit of life, the cell.

3. Life can also "work." No, not the daily employment variety, but living creatures can take in energy from the environment. This energy, in the form of food, is transformed to maintain metabolic processes and for survival. Life grows and develops. This means more than just getting larger in size. Living organisms also have the ability to rebuild and repair themselves when injured (поврежденный). Life can reproduce. Have you ever seen dirt (грязь) reproduce? I don't think so. Life can only come from other living creatures.

4. Life can respond. Think about the last time you accidentally stubbed (ударили, ушибли) your toe. Almost instantly, you flinched (отдернулись) back in pain. Life is characterized by this response to stimuli. Finally, life can adapt and respond to the demands placed on it by the environment. There are three basic types of adaptations that can occur in higher organisms. So we can say the key characteristics or functions of living beings are organization, energy, growth/development, reproduction, responding to stimuli and adaptation. These characteristics form the basis of the study of biology. 

Learn more about: www.glogster.com

Biology as a science

1.Biology is the science of life. Biologists study the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution and distribution of living organisms. There are generally considered to be at least nine “umbrella” fields of biology, each of which consists of multiple subfields: biochemistry, botany, cellular biology, ecology, evolutionary biology, genetics, molecular biology, physiology, zoology.

2.Biology has a long history. Even early humans had to study the animals that they hunted and know where to find the plants that they gathered for food. In classical times, Aristotle is often considered to be the first to practice scientific zoology. He performed extensive studies of marine life and plants. During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci made detailed anatomical drawings of human beings. One of the first illustrated biology books is a botanical text written by German botanist Leonhard Fuchs in 1542.

3.During the Victorian era, and throughout the 19th century, “Natural Science” became something of a mania. On Nov. 24, 1859, Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species".  In 1866, Gregor Mendel published papers on inheritance (наследственность) and is now known as the father of genetics. In 1953, Watson and Crick explained the structure and function of DNA.

4.The 20th and 21st centuries may be known to future generations as the beginning of the “Biological Revolution”. We may “grow” batteries from bacteria or light buildings with bioluminescent fungi. We may discover ways to save our oceans while using them to produce enough food to feed the nations. The possibilities are endless; biology is just coming into its own.