Question

How antibiotic penicillin helps in fighting disease causing bacteria?
1. It blocks bacterial processes that build the cellwall
2. It directly affects the process of nutrition of bacteria.
3. It do not allow Bacteria to multiply
4. It do not allow bacteria to excrete its waste product.

Answer 1

Correct Answer - Option 1 : It blocks bacterial processes that build the cellwall

Concept-

• Anti is a Greek word that means ‘against’, and bio means ‘life’, together they mean ‘against life’ (in the context of disease-causing organisms); whereas with reference to human beings, they are ‘pro life’ and not against.
• Antibiotics are chemical substances, which are produced by some microbes and can kill or retard the growth of other (disease-causing) microbes. 
• Alexander Fleming while working on Staphylococci bacteria, once observed a mould growing in one of his unwashed culture plates around which Staphylococci could not grow.
• He found out that it was due to a chemical produced by the mould and he named it Penicillin after the mould Penicillium notatum.
• However, its full potential as an effective antibiotic was established much later by Ernest Chain and Howard Florey.
• This antibiotic was extensively used to treat American soldiers wounded in World War II. Fleming, Chain, and Florey were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945, for this discovery. 

Antibiotic penicillin helps in fighting disease-causing bacteria as It blocks bacterial processes that build the cell wall.

• Antibiotics, such as penicillin, kill the bacteria.
• Antibiotics are used as drugs to treat infections because of their low toxicity for humans and animals.
• These drugs usually interfere with the formation of the bacterial cell wall.
• A bacteriostatic stops bacteria from multiplying.