Develop a paragraph (100 words) addressing all of the points below and back up y
ID: 274274 • Letter: D
Question
Develop a paragraph (100 words) addressing all of the points below and back up your posting with reference and notation from a reliable scientific website (EX: National Geographic, PBS, Discovery, Smithsonian, New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, Science Daily, New Science, The Guardian, Science News, Biology News, Popular Science, The New York Times Science Section, The Scientist). Explain why some fungi produce antibiotic chemicals? (Hint: think in terms of the benefit for the fungus not humans).
Explanation / Answer
Antibiotics inhibit the growth of other microbes such as bacteria, for example, the antibiotic produced by fungi (penicillin) inhibit the growth of bacteria. This is important for the fungus because they use these antibiotic chemicals to protect their regions of food sources, thus, prevent other microbes to “spoil” their food. This explanation is well accepted, but is found difficult to prove in the wild because the antibiotic concentration in the soil is likely to be lesser than required to kill the bacteria as many types of soil components tend to dilute it.
It was also found that these antibiotic molecules modulate the transcriptional profiles of bacteria, so the scientists argue that the antibiotics released by microbes are actually the signalling molecules.
Reference:
Clardy, J., Fischbach, M., & Currie, C. (2009). The natural history of antibiotics. Current Biology?: CB, 19(11), R437–R441.
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.