Process
Antimicrobial resistance
Microbes evolving to survive drugs meant to kill them. Bacterial resistance was associated with an estimated 4.95 million deaths in 2019.
Antibiotics
Drugs that kill bacteria or stop their growth. Penicillin traces back to Fleming's 1929 report of a mold that stopped bacteria growing.Source: Fleming, 1929Source: OpenStax, 2016
Also called penicillin.
Technology or method
How Antibiotics connects
Antibiotics selects for
Antibiotics is related to
Organism or group
Bacteria
Small single-celled organisms without a nucleus, found almost everywhere on Earth. Most bacteria in the human body are harmless, and some are helpful.
Studied in
Your progress
Sources & further reading
The explanations on this page are our own summaries of these sources. Follow a link to read the original; if anything here disagrees with it, the original wins. How we choose and check sources.
On the antibacterial action of cultures of a penicillium, with special reference to their use in the isolation of B. influenzae (opens the original in a new tab)
Fleming A (1929). British Journal of Experimental Pathology 10:226-236.
The original report of penicillin's antibacterial activity.
Historical paperPrimary researchMicrobiology (opens the original in a new tab)
OpenStax (2016). OpenStax, Rice University.
TextbookEducationalLicence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (linked, not reused)