Overview: Antibiotic Solutions

Antibiotics are chemical compounds created to prevent growth and eliminate specific bacterial strains. They are also referred to as antibacterials or antimicrobials, and work against infections that are caused by specific bacteria and parasites. In biological sciences, antibiotic solutions are widely used for various applications, including the inhibition or regulation of cell wall synthesis, nucleic acid metabolism, and protein synthesis. These solution types can vary in composition and concentration in order to best suit the experiment in question.

Antibiotic Mechanisms

There are many types of antibiotics, and each type has a unique chemical structure and mechanism of action. All known bacteria are divided into two different categories depending on the cell membrane structure and composition of their cell walls and thus behave differently to antibiotics. These bacterial types have also been assigned based on how a bacterium reacts to Gram-Staining ^[1], a widely used standard staining procedure in microbiology, that stains bacteria based on membrane structure and composition of their cell walls.

Gram-positive bacteria ^[2] often stain purple in this test as they have a thick layer of peptidoglycan in their cell walls, which is capable of retaining a lot of the crystal violet dye used in the stain. On the other hand, Gram-negative bacteria ^[3] do not retain the crystal violet dye, as they have the outer lipid membrane on the outside of their relatively thinner peptidoglycan cell walls, preventing any contact between the dye used and their peptidoglycan makeup. Since many antibiotics rely on attacking on the cell wall and peptidoglycan of bacteria, gram-negative bacteria are often much more antibiotic resistant than their gram-positive counterparts, as their outer lipid membrane provides them protection. This membrane also contains lipopolysaccharides embedded within them, which are released as bacterial endotoxins when gram-negative bacteria die.

Image 1: The difference between Gram-negative bacteria and Gram-positive bacteria involve their exterior cell walls and cell membranes. This is very important for choosing the correct antibiotic solutions.

Industrial Application

The use of the correct antibiotic solutions within biological experiments are key to preventing uncontrolled bacterial growth and risk of microbial contamination. In biotechnology, the use of bacteria as vectors for plasmid transfection is a very popular method of studying changes in DNA and developing therapies for genetic diseases. These testing types require the careful selection and isolation of bacteria of interest, which is accomplished by using the specific antibiotics that the strain of interest is resistant to but will eliminate strains that aren't of interest. Antibiotic solutions can also allow scientists to study when bacteria become resistant to known antibiotics, allowing for further development of future antibiotics.

Examples of Good's Buffers

The chemicals used to create Good's buffers are found in the following list. This list encapsulates many chemicals Norman Good had discovered that had met his buffer acceptance criteria. The pH ranges of buffers are directly correlated to the pKa values of their functional groups.

Good's Buffers at Boston BioProducts

Every Good's Buffer is unique to the cell type used and the experimental application. Select the appropriate Good's Buffer from the catalog or design your optimal formulation with custom manufacturing options at Boston BioProducts.

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References:

• 1. Islam, M.S., Aryasomayajula, A and Selvaganapathy, P.R., (2017). A Review on Macroscale and Microscale Cell Lysis Methods. Micromachines, 8(3), 83; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi8030083.
  2. Peach, M., Marsh, N., & MacPhee, D. J. (2012). Protein solubilization: attend to the choice of lysis buffer. In Methods in molecular biology (Vol. 869, pp. 35-42). Protein Solubilization: Attend to the Choice of Lysis Buffer | SpringerLink