Question

1.) What kinds of drugs would you develop to combat viral infections?

2.) Frederick Griffith used mice and a pneumonia causing bacterium to demonstrate that dna is the basis of transformation. why is it called transformation not conjugation or transduction?

Answer 1

Antibiotics are powerful medicines that fight bacterial infections. They either kill bacteria or stop them from reproducing, allowing the body’s natural defenses to eliminate the pathogens. Used properly, antibiotics can save lives. But growing antibiotic resistance is curbing the effectiveness of these drugs. Taking an antibiotic as directed, even after symptoms disappear, is key to curing an infection and preventing the development of resistant bacteria.

Antibiotics don’t work against viral infections such as colds or the flu. In those cases, physicians often prescribe antiviral drugs, which fight infection by inhibiting a virus’s ability to reproduce. There are several different classes of drugs in the antiviral family, and each is used for specific kinds of viral infections. (Unlike antibacterial drugs, which may cover a wide spectrum of pathogens, antiviral medications are used to treat a narrower range of organisms.) Antiviral drugs are now available to treat a number of viruses, including influenza, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), herpes, and hepatitis B and C. Like bacteria, viruses mutate over time and develop resistance to antiviral drugs.

Modern medicine needs new kinds of antibiotics and antivirals to treat drug-resistant infections. But the pipeline of new drugs is drying up. The last new class of antibiotics to be approved was the lipopeptides (e.g., daptomycin) discovered in 1987.