(noun. /an-tee-by-AW-tic/)
by Jamie Liu
What does it mean?
Antibiotics are drugs that are used to treat or prevent bacterial infections in humans or animals. They are made from bacteria or can be synthetically derived. They work by killing or inhibiting the growth of bacteria by destroying parts of the bacteria like the cell wall or stop important processes like transcription and translation that bacteria need to survive.
How do I use it in a sentence?
“To treat strep throat, the doctor prescribed an antibiotic.”
There are over 100 antibiotics available to treat bacteria. However, not all antibiotics are effective in eliminating every species of bacteria. Escherichia coli is pictured here treated with either Antibiotic A or Antibiotic B. Antibiotic A is successful in killing E. coli while Antibiotic B is not and E. coli is able to survive and grow. Schematic generated in BioRender.
Etymology
From the Latin word “anti-” meaning “against” and “bioticus” meaning “of life”
History of usage
The word “antibiotic” was first used in 1941 by the scientist and Nobel Prize winner Selman Waksman, who discovered 20 antibiotics.
Related terms
Antimicrobial
Fields of study in which this word is commonly used
Microbiology, infectious disease
