Antibiotics, something more than defensive and offensive weapons

Authors

  • Juan Carlos Codina Escobar Spain

Keywords:

antibiotics, homersis, biofilms, ecological fitness

Abstract

The discovery of antibiotics opened a new era in therapeutics reducing the number of people dead by infections. But antibiotics play other roles in the environment that enable the bacteria that produce them to increase their ecological fitness. Antibiotics exert different effects at concentrations below the inhibitory level playing a role in the hormesis process, that is, the ability of metabolites to induce different responses depending on its concentration. These responses range from production of biofilms to bacterial motility or nutritional functions. So, our human point of view of antibiotics should change.

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Hernandez ME y otros. Phenazines and other redox-active antibiotics promote microbial mineral reduction. Appl. Envi- ron. Microbiol. 70:921–28. 2004.

Published

2017-03-20

How to Cite

Codina Escobar , J. C. (2017). Antibiotics, something more than defensive and offensive weapons. Encuentros En La Biología, 10(162), 206–208. Retrieved from https://www.revistas.uma.es/index.php/enbio/article/view/17622