Antibiotics Anf Other Medicines

Question 1

what are antibiotics?

Answer 1

Antibiotics are chemicals that kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria.
They’re used by humans as drugs to treat bacterial infections. They’re useful because they can usually target bacterial cells without damaging human body cells

Question 2

Antibiotic resistance

Answer 2

There is genetic variation in a population of bacteria.
Genetic mutations make some bacteria naturally resistant to an antibiotic.
For the bacterium, this ability to resist an antibiotic is a big advantage, It’s able to survive for longer and reproduces many more times, This leads to the allele for antibiotic resistance being passed on to lots of offspring.
It’s an example of natural selection This is how antibiotic resistance spreads and becomes more common in a population of bacteria over time.
This is a problem for people who become infected with these bacteria, because you can’t easily get rid of them with antibiotics.
Increased use of antibiotics means that antibiotic resistance is increasing.
This means we are less able to treat some potentially life-threatening bacterial infections.

Question 3

Name two strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria

Answer 3

MRSA , causes serious wound infections and is resistant to several antibiotics, including meticillin

Clostridium difficile infects the digestive system, usually causing problems in people who have already been treated with antibiotics,harmless bacteria that are
normally present in the digestive system are killed by the antibiotics, which
C., difficile is resistant to. This allows C. difficile to flourish C. difficile produces a toxin, which causes severe diarrhoea, fever and cramps

Question 4

Why is protecting biodiversity important for the development of new drugs

Answer 4

Many medical drugs are manufactured using natural compounds found in plants, animals or microorganisms.
Only a small proportion of organisms have been investigated so far, so it’s possible that plants or microorganisms exist that contain compounds that could be used to treat currently incurable diseases, such as AIDS. Others may produce new antibiotics.
Possible sources of drugs need to be protected by maintaining the biodiversity on Earth. If we don’t protect them, some species could die out before we get a chance to study them.

Even organisms that have already been studied could still prove to be useful sources of medicines as new techniques are developed for identifying, purifying and testing compounds.

Question 5

What is personalised medicine

Answer 5

Your genes determine how your body responds to certain drugs. Different people respond to the same drug in different ways, which makes certain drugs more effective for some people than others.
Personalised medicines are medicines that are tailored to an individual’s DNA. if doctors have your genetic information, they can use it to predict how you will respond to different drugs and only prescribe the ones that will be most effective for you,
Scientists hope that by studying the relationship between someone’s genetic make-up and their responsiveness to drugs, more effective drugs can be produced in the future.

Question 6

What is synthetic biology

Answer 6

Synthetic biology involves using technology to design and make things like artificial proteins, cells and even microorganisms.

It has applications in lots of different areas, including medicine.
For example, scientists are looking at engineering bacteria to destroy cancer cells, while leaving healthy body cells intact.