In 1928, a Scottish scientist by the name of Alexander Fleming was working in his laboratory on cultures of staphylococci bacteria, and came back from vacation to find one of the cultures of bacteria had a fungus growing on it. He noticed that the colonies of bacteria around the fungus had been all but eradicated, with many of the other colonies growing far around the fungus. He identified a chemical compound being excreted by the fungus (known as Penicillium rubens ), which, when exposed to bacteria, interfered in the bacteria’s ability to regenerate its cell wall, causing death of the cell . He named this bacteria killing chemical penicillin, and with that, the first antibiotic was discovered . Since 1928, hundreds of other antibiotics have…show more content… Boils, or abscesses, and acne can often be attributed to staph infections. Often, the patient never has to receive medical care, as the infection will go away on its own, but if the patient is immunocompromised, then the infection can become a major issue, and the patient will usually have to take antibiotics to assist the body in fighting off the infection. Staph can also become a bigger issue if the strain is resistant to a particular antibiotic, such as the case of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (abbr. MRSA), where the bacteria has developed a resistance to a series of antibiotics called beta-lactam antibiotics (or β-lactam antibiotics), but often just addressed as methicillin-resistant (“Causes”). Often, bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics because patients begin to feel better, and stop taking the antibiotics. This allows the bugs to grow back before they can all be eradicated. Improper diagnosis of the bacteria in question can also lead to use of antibiotics which may not be entirely effective for that particular strain, and so the strain simply becomes more resistant as the weaker bugs are killed off. Beta-lactam antibiotics encompass two major families of antibiotics, the penicillins and the cephalosporins. This category of antibiotics is named for their chemical structure, in which a chemical ring of carbon atoms, an oxygen atom, and a
