Jack was sick with a cold and fever. the doctor prescribed him erythromycin, an antibiotic. analyzing the process of translation in jack's cells, you find that the bacterial protein synthesis is blocked after consuming erythromycin but not jack's own cellular protein synthesis. how is that possible?

Question

Biology

Catherine Dunn

10 July, 22:33

Jack was sick with a cold and fever. the doctor prescribed him erythromycin, an antibiotic. analyzing the process of translation in jack's cells, you find that the bacterial protein synthesis is blocked after consuming erythromycin but not jack's own cellular protein synthesis. how is that possible?

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Joel · Answer 1

This is because it is a selective antibiotic that, when entering the body, binds to the 50s subunit of bacterial ribosomes, thus causing the disruption of protein transcription of bacteria.

This drug does not stop the transcription of human proteins since bacteria and humans do not have the same ribosomes, therefore, humans or sick cells do not have the active site to which the drug binds.

Explanation:

This is because it is a selective antibiotic that, when entering the body, binds to the 50s subunit of bacterial ribosomes, thus causing the disruption of protein transcription of bacteria.

This drug does not stop the transcription of human proteins since bacteria and humans do not have the same ribosomes, therefore humans or host cells do not have the active site to which the drug binds.

Erythromycin falls into the macrolide family and is considered a drug that is bacteriostatic at low concentrations and bactericidal at very high concentrations.

The difference between these named terms is that one ends the life of the bacterium (bactericidal) and the other stops the bacterial metabolism preventing its possibility of increasing in number.