• Question: How do we beat bacteria

    Asked by 238furk43 to Chris, Joanne, Kathryn, Kieran, Sarah on 10 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Chris Werner

      Chris Werner answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      Not all bacteria is bad, and will still be going strong when humans become extinct! There’s good bacteria in your stomach which helps break down your food (I freaked out first time I heard that!) Anti-biotics can be used to deal with some of the bad bacteria, but what is particularly worrying is the anti-biotic resistant bad bacteria nowadays. So in short we can’t beat bacteria for good!

    • Photo: Sarah Guerin

      Sarah Guerin answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      Well firstly you should know that there are lots of good kinds of bacteria that keep us healthy. As for the bad bacteria, we are doing quite a good job of fighting it, between cleaning products, medicines and eating well.

    • Photo: Joanne Duffy

      Joanne Duffy answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      So I’m a microbiologist (I study bacteria) and it’s SUPER important to remember that most bacteria don’t cause disease, and lots of them are more important to our health. There are more bacteria in your mouth than there are people on earth, and there are more bacterial cells in and on your body than there are of your own cells. We would not be able to live without them, in our bodies and with all of the products that are made with them. So we only really need to beat a few species to prevent diseases, and I think the best way to do that is using vaccinations, which save lives all over the world.

    • Photo: Kathryn Schoenrock

      Kathryn Schoenrock answered on 11 Nov 2017:

      Yep- funny thing is we usually beat bacteria with what we call antibacterials or antibiotics that are created by another living organism and then mimicked or produced by us one we know the chemical structure. For instance on of the most famous antibiotics is penicillin and it came from a mould! But, like Chris mentioned, many bacteria are now resistant to penicillin because it has been used so often.

      We keep looking for new drugs though. Organisms develop natural resistance to each other and we use this to find new chemicals in those organisms. The natural drugs can be helpful in fighting bacteria, disease, and viruses. Many of them come from other bacteria though, so like the bacteria in your gut that keeps you healthy, many species are good for you!

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