Let us use this moment to explain how antibiotics work. Like Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity and made it more powerful, scientists stole antibiotics from nature to make it live longer. In the wild, antibiotics are typically natural compounds that microbes use to kill other microbes. Basically the swords and guns of the microworld. The first successful antibiotic, penicillin, is a weapon from the mold Penicillium rubens that works by blocking bacteria’s ability to make cell walls. As a bacterium tries to grow and divide it needs to produce more cell walls and
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