Team:IIT Madras/Background
What are antibiotics?
Antibiotics, also known as antimicrobial agents are drugs that fight infections caused by bacteria. The key word in the previous sentence is bacteria. Antibiotics will have no effect if taken during a a viral infection like common cold, most sore throats and the flu. However, bacterial infections are a threat too, and antibiotics have served us well in fighting them for over 70 years. So how do they work? Antibiotics are chemicals that interact adversely with different components of a bacterium's structure and/or metabolism, thus bringing about their demise. For example some antibiotics like penicillins attack the cell wall and rupture it, others like tetracyclines target protein synthesis. The diagram below shows some of the molecular targets of antibiotics on bacterial cells
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