Answer to Question #117531 in Human Anatomy and Physiology for MAKHUOGA ALFRED FRIDAY

Question

Antibiotics are used to treat a wide variety of bacterial infections and have saved millions of lives since they were first introduced in the 1940s and 1950s. However, due to both overuse and misuse, many are no longer effective and The World Health Organisation (WHO) considers the emergence of new antibiotic-resistant bacteria to be a serious threat to global public health.

According to their mechanism of action, antibiotics can be divided into three main groups, those inhibiting cell wall synthesis, those inhibiting protein synthesis and those that inhibit nucleic acid synthesis.

Write a sentence for each of these mechanisms describing the manner in which the DNA can be transferred from one cell to another.

Answer 1

There are three ways in which DNA is transferred from one cell to the other: transduction, conjugation and transformation. Transduction is the mode of transfer whereby DNA is transferred between cells by a virus. This kind of viruses are known as bacteriophage and the lack the ability to replicate hence they use bacterial apparatus to do so. Conjugation is where DNA is transferred directly from one cell to another through direct contact. This process involves plasmids. Lastly, transformation is the kind of DNA that rise from a lysed dead bacteria and is released to the entire environment.