What is an antibiotic? What is this 'miracle drug' that everyone talks about? There is a lot about antibiotics that we should all be more aware of.
The word 'antibiotic' actually means 'anti-life'. The most common definition that we use for an antibiotic is: any substance produced by a microorganism that harms or kills another microorganism.
There are many different kinds of antibiotic substances, most of them are natural products that certain bacteria and fungi (molds) produce and send outside of their cells. About 90% of the antibiotics we use today, are originated from bacteria. However there are a couple of antibiotics that were created from scratch in laboratory. These totally synthetic antibiotics are designed to inhibit some process previously identified to be completely unique to bacteria, and necessary for the bacterium to remain alive.
Bacterium in the wild suffers a constant competition for available nutrients. Therefore if they can develop a substance that can cripple or annihilate their competitors then they have an advantage.
So, even though these microorganisms do not have the ability to decide what substance to produce, through several mutations and additional events, they are capacitated to compete and consequently to survive more readily within their environment.
We use antibiotics for a different purpose, of course, to help us kill harmful bacteria that cause us infection and disease.
Scottish physician Alexander Fleming rediscovered in 1928 what Ernest Duchesne, a French Student, had initially discovered in 1896; the first and most famous fungus, Penicillium, which conceived the first identified microbial antibiotic, penicillin.
Commercial methods for penicillin for human use were only developed in 1941 at the time of World War II. Howard Floerey and Ernst Chain made a major effort to try to make penicillin available to all of the British, U.S., and other allies...