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An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria.It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and prevention of such infections.
Antibiotics with less reliable but occasional (depending on isolate and subspecies) activity: occasionally penicillins including penicillin, ampicillin and ampicillin-sulbactam, amoxicillin and amoxicillin-clavulnate, and piperacillin-tazobactam (not all vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus isolates are resistant to penicillin and ampicillin)
The β-lactam ring is part of the core structure of several antibiotic families, the principal ones being the penicillins, cephalosporins, carbapenems, and monobactams, which are, therefore, also called β-lactam antibiotics. Nearly all of these antibiotics work by inhibiting bacterial cell wall biosynthesis.
β-Lactam antibiotics are indicated for the prevention and treatment of bacterial infections caused by susceptible organisms. At first, β-lactam antibiotics were mainly active only against gram-positive bacteria, yet the recent development of broad-spectrum β-lactam antibiotics active against various gram-negative organisms has increased their usefulness.
The most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of bacteria and archaea was probably a hyperthermophile that lived about 2.5 billion–3.2 billion years ago. [16] [17] [18] The earliest life on land may have been bacteria some 3.22 billion years ago. [19] Bacteria were also involved in the second great evolutionary divergence, that of the archaea and ...
Antimicrobial use has been common practice for at least 2000 years. Ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks used specific molds and plant extracts to treat infection. [5]In the 19th century, microbiologists such as Louis Pasteur and Jules Francois Joubert observed antagonism between some bacteria and discussed the merits of controlling these interactions in medicine. [6]
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Forms nouns that denote a person who 'feeds on' the first element or part of the word Greek φαγιστής (phagistḗs) eater; see -phagia: Lotophagi-phagy: Forms nouns that denotes 'feeding on' the first element or part of the word Greek φαγία (phagia) eating; see -phagia: hematophagy: phall-phallus: Greek φαλλός (phallós ...