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About this Zone
Ever called someone ‘literally a lifesaver’? Unlike your mate giving you the answers to your homework, antibiotics fully deserve the label. Antibiotics are drugs that kill bacterial cells, or slow their growth, and without them many common infections would be deadly. A new problem we’re facing is bacteria developing resistance to drugs we’ve used for decades. So what’s next?
MRSA, in purple, a very antibiotic-resistant ‘superbug’, being eaten by a white blood cell. They must have been out of ice-cream. | Image: NIH
In this zone there is a scientist who makes drugs to help fight disease, one who grows bacteria to see how they evolve, and one who looks at how our bodies fight off threatening microbes. There is also a chemist who is trying to make medicines in environmentally-friendly ways, and someone who is working on ways to speed up testing for dangerous bacteria.