Studies on antibiotics and their origins and developments, and more importantly -
the impact in our world today.
Genetically Modified Antibiotics
Topic Background
What are antibiotics?
Antibiotics are agents that can stop the growth of organisms or kill them. During the 1890’s, Rudolf Emmerich and Oscar Low were the first to make an antibiotic to be used in hospitals, but it did not work often, making it unreliable. However, in 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming had returned from the holidays, looking through his petri dishes with colonies of bacteria, and finding a petri dish with an area in the middle containing no bacteria. In the middle of the petri dish was a patch of mold, and it appeared to be stopping the growth of the bacteria. Fleming then researched the mold with his colleagues at Oxford University which turned this mold into a life saving drug called penicillin. After refining his research and making the drug, Fleming decided to help someone with a life threatening infection. Penicillin helped the patient recover. However the patient died a few days later, because they had ran out of the drug. Later after having successful results with other patients, Fleming began to have plans for giving penicillin to the British troops in World War II.. Penicillin treated most infectious diseases in the war, which gave the drug more exposure to the world, causing the Antibiotic Era, where new antibiotics were being discovered and being used to save lives and cure diseases.
How are they made?
Initially, antibiotics were a natural substance found in varied minerals, such as garlic and echinacea, used to kill bacteria. It was only until Fleming’s discovery of penicillin changed the market for antibiotics, and created a massive outcry for more of these disease treating substances that resulted in the production of antibiotics. Despite the fact that most antibiotics occur naturally, mass production is developed through a process called fermentation in which a specific microorganism is placed into an isolated environment to reproduce and multiply. This procedure continues until the microorganism excretes enough antibiotic for the finalized product to be refined and tested for contamination. Through this, different antibiotics were created through chemical manipulation of certain antibiotic-producing microorganisms, generally found in soil. In 2006, scientists began to research new ways to advance macrolide antibiotics to fight back against superbugs by analyzing its molecules. By taking in the structure of macrolides, a type of antibiotic that most people are acceptive of and causes few side-effects, scientists would be able to recreate it in the form of bacteria, and in turn make a more effective antibiotic. Not only does this method contribute towards sufficient aiding of infectious disease, it also produces less chemical waste because it does not involve a great deal of fermentation as bacteria multiplies itself.
The major challenges and advancements towards antibiotics were considerable factors towards their further development. A critical problem that scientists had come across were side effects for certain antibiotics. Some examples include vomiting, discharge, dizziness, shortness of breath, patches on tongue and birth defects. In Bellis’s article, “History of Antibiotics,” it states, “Streptomycin could treat diseases like tuberculosis, however, the side effects were often too severe...” proving that although antibiotics were generally very beneficial in treating illnesses, there were times when the side effects would overpower its helpfulness. In order to settle this, they have made over a hundred different kinds of antibiotics for cases where people are allergic to an antibiotic and are given another type of prescription. Another challenging factor was that many scientists had to research countlessly in order to get the suitable enzymes for the antibiotic that would destroy the offending bacterias. For example, in an article detailing scientist Alexander Fleming’s time spent researching, “.. his military career inspired him to discover naturally antiseptic enzyme in 1921… Six years later; as a result of some intelligent serendipity, he stumbled on discovering penicillin.” A major factor that antibiotics now are struggling with are “super bugs,” which are bacteria that are resistant to the effects of antibiotics due to overuse of the drug. Since antibiotics tend to kill off both good and bad bacteria, natural bacteria that resist tends to multiply and turn into super bugs. This causes a problem as whenever a new antibiotic is made, a minor bacteria is killed off with it. In order to prevent more superbugs from producing, scientists have founded the creation of macrolide antibiotics.
Antibiotics continued to gain more achievements on treating more diseases, fungal, and earache infections. Many labs specialize on finding out more of which bacteria should be used to treat the copious types of conditions on patients by lab tests, sensitivity, and gram stains, “Special strains of the bacteria such as Gram stains, can be used to identify bacteria under the microscope and may help narrow down which species of bacteria is causing infection.” Now there are over one hundred antibiotics that can be prescribed and taken to rid of everyday bacteria infections. For example, the most adapted antibiotic for pneumonia is penicillin. Antibiotics have developed so much that past life threatening diseases have been cured by them, such as aminoglycoside towards the treatment of the bubonic plague. In addition, antibiotics have long half-lives so that they can be taken once every twenty-four hours, and be much more effective against other infections. Overall, antibiotics have saved many lives and benefit many patients from these bacterial diseases to help improve their lives.
Are antibiotics still under development?
Unfortunately, antibiotics are still under development to find a way to more conveniently stop the creation of superbugs. Since the production of superbugs happens through the overuse or through the use of low dosages of medical drugs, these infectious germs, begin to resist antibiotics and multiply. Superbugs are also beginning to show up in community settings, such as schools, nursing homes, and locker rooms, making them more dangerous as they are infectious. Scientists are struggling to find a way to stop these antibiotic-resistant bacteria from forming and rendering the current antibiotics useless. Scientists are looking into new ways to create new substances by synthetic biology and crowdfunding where ordinary people can find different chemicals or substances to kill bacteria. Yet doctors and scientists suggest antibiotics to be used wisely, since they still help treat many infections such as strep throat and sinus infections. Even though these antibiotics fail to surpass superbugs, if used as recommended, these bacteria can work to cure many of the everyday diseases people contract. Scientists hope to find or create new antibiotics to stop these superbugs from spreading and causing an epidemic.