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How does Tetracycline kill bacteria? What is selective toxicity in antibiotics? Is Tetracycline selectively toxic? Please...

  • How does Tetracycline kill bacteria?
  • What is selective toxicity in antibiotics?
  • Is Tetracycline selectively toxic? Please explain your answer; in other words, how or why Tetracycline is or is not selectively toxic?

Solutions

Expert Solution

How does Tetracycline kill bacteria?

Answer: Tetracycline is an antibiotic that inhibits the process of Translation in bacteria. Thus, it inhibits the protein synthesis process. It exerts the inhibition by reversibly binding 30S ribosomal subunit of bacteria at the A-site. As a result, the incoming aminoacyl-tRNA gets blocked due to which the process of translation comes to a halt. Hence, the bacteria is unable to synthesize proteins that are required for its survival thereby leading to its death.

What is selective toxicity in antibiotics?

Selective toxicity in antibiotics refers to the fact that the antibiotic is highly effective in inhibiting its target microbe but has no (or minimal) toxicity for the host which is infected by the microbe. It is the ability of any antibiotic to target the sites that are specific to the microbe that has caused infection. Thus, it kills the microbe's cell but does not kill the host cells. It is quantitatively expressed in terms of drug's therapeutic index (TI), which is calculated as the ratio of toxic dose to therapeutic dose.

Is Tetracycline selectively toxic? Please explain your answer; in other words, how or why Tetracycline is or is not selectively toxic?

Yes. Tetracycline is selectively toxic as an antibiotic. This is because although tetracycline can affect both prokaryotic as well as eukaryotic ribosomes, but bacteria have a specific feature that makes it more vulnerable to tertracycline. Bacteria cause selective accumulation of tetracycline. Bacteria use ATP to actively pump the influx of tetracycline in their cytoplasm against the concentration gradient, thereby becoming more susceptible to tetracycline. However, eukaryotes possess no such feature, that makes them less vulnerable. In this way, tetracycline kills bacteria but spares the host cells.

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